The problem in your example is not the leading '-' but the inline hyphen. Since -font-family has the latter its gunna fail. And if you had used strict should have failed with an error. I say should because when I tested it it didnt (I am preparing a bug report right now), however with warnings enabled you do get a good idea of what is going on. Also B::Deparse gets this stuff wrong FWICT. (another bug report on the way)

D:\perl\psmail-1.0>perl -MData::Dumper -w -e "use strict; print Dumper
+({-font-family => 'not-valid'})"
Argument "family" isn't numeric in subtraction (-) at -e line 1.
Argument "-font" isn't numeric in subtraction (-) at -e line 1.
$VAR1 = {
          '0' => 'not-valid'
        };

D:\perl\psmail-1.0>perl -MData::Dumper -w -e "use strict; print Dumper
+({-fontfamily => 'not-valid'})"
$VAR1 = {
          '-fontfamily' => 'not-valid'
        };

# Deparse gets this one _wrong_
D:\perl\psmail-1.0>perl -MO=Deparse -MCGI -e "use strict; my $q = new 
+CGI ; print $q->Tr({-fontfamily => 'not-valid'})"
my $q = 'CGI'->new;
print $q->Tr({-'fontfamily', 'not-valid'});
-e syntax OK

# Hard to say for sure, but apparently Deparse gets this right. But wh
+y doesnt it die?
D:\perl\psmail-1.0>perl -MO=Deparse -MCGI -e "use strict; my $q = new 
+CGI ; print $q->Tr({-font-family => 'not-valid'})"

my $q = 'CGI'->new;
print $q->Tr({-'font' - 'family', 'not-valid'});
-e syntax OK
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--- demerphq
my friends call me, usually because I'm late....