Many people, even knowledgable, observant Jews, understand that this hyphenation is an ettiquette sort of thing, based on the respect we should show to God. From that perspective, the questions of the OP, and many of the comments since then, make a lot of sense.
I was taught a different explanation.
In Deut. 12:1-3, God tells the Children of Israel what to do with the many idols which they will find in the Promised Land: Destroy their high places, tear down their altars, break their pillars, and destroy their name from there.
In contrast, the next verse, Deut 12:4, commands: Do not do so to the Lord your God.
Thus there is a specific command to destroy the names of idols, and not to destroy God’s name. To prevent His name from coming to destruction, we avoid writing it to begin with, and instead we use the hyphenated code so that we can still get the point across.
This explains why there is no problem writing the full name in Bibles or prayerbooks or any other medium not in imminent danger of being thrown in the trash.
Also, it could be argued that it only applies to His name when written in Hebrew, as that would be His “true” name. My practice is to hyphenate even in English, as whatever we call Him becomes His name, regardless of the language.
On the other hand, I do not use the hyphenation when typing on computer, unless I think the page might be printed on hard copy. The logic is that the characters appearing on the screen are constantly fading and being refreshed, and so they are not capable of being destroyed (even the Delete key will simply cause the name to be not refreshed).