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FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2007

Hater-ation for the Hyphen Nation

Have you noticed how the effects of the American Revolution are being reversed by an invasion of British scolds? The most famous, of course, is Simon Cowell, the imperious judge on “American Idol” (“Go find your vocal coach and ask for a refund.”) It now seems that every talent show needs its cranky Brit on the bench.

Remember Anne Robinson, that horrid “You are the weakest link” woman, the “Queen of Mean,” who looked and sounded like the love child of a vampire and a concentration camp commandant? And what about all those plump British spit-spot TV nannies brought to America to whip our children into shape?

Benny Hill, Posh Spice, and soccer hooligans notwithstanding, we Americans think of the English as makers of a more advanced civilization. But no longer. News has arrived from across the sea that the new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has hacked the hyphens off of 16,000 or so words. And it’s about time.

The hyphen is the no-see-um of the language landscape, barely visible when alone, but pestilent in swarms on the page. Moreover, the hyphen is hardly ever necessary. I say “hardly ever” because when I looked up a certain word at the beginning of this paragraph, I was chagrined to see that no-see-um had been cobbled together not by one but T-W-O hyphens.

The reason the Brits give for disassembling their Hyphen Nation is that old lexical bugaboo: a shift in usage. According to Oxford University Press project editor Angus Stevenson — and ain’t that a great name for a wordsmith, laddie — there has been a 5 percent decline in the use of hyphens over the past 30 years. (If 5 percent becomes the tipping point for decline unto death, look over your shoulder for Dr. Kevorkian.)

As a result of this decline, these changes became desirable:

Fig-leaf is now fig leaf. Pot-belly is now pot belly. But pigeon-hole is now pigeonhole, which looks a bit crowded to me, like a subway car at rush hour (or is it rush-hour?). I applaud the leap-frog elements joining forces as leapfrog.

Without hyphens, these will become single words: bumblebee, chickpea, crybaby and logjam. These will be split in two: ice cream, hobby horse, pot belly and test tube.

What makes the British revisions so delicious, in a Yorkshire pudding sort of way, is their behind-handed-ness. It turns out that American dictionaries scraped off those unsightly barnacles editions ago, a form of cultural leadership uncharacteristic of us Yanks.

“In America they are less squeamish than we are, and do not shrink from such forms as ‘coattails’ and ‘aftereffects’” wrote the British authors of “A Dictionary of Modern English Usage.” Here’s their take on the hyphen: “No two dictionaries and no two sets of style rules would be found to give consistently the same advice. There is, however, one principle that seems to command at least lip service from all authorities. This is that the hyphen is not an ornament but an aid to being understood, and should be employed only when it is needed for that purpose.”

It should help us tell the difference, for example, between “a little used car” and “a little-used car.”

When redundant or misplaced, the hyphen is more unsightly wrinkle than ornament. All writers I know underestimate the value of the visual aesthetics of the page. Enlightened writers should concern themselves with typeface, type size, white space, format and even with the visual effects of punctuation. I asked my colleague Sara Quinn, a brilliant page designer, which punctuation mark she found most beautiful.

“The umlaut,” she said, having spent way too much time with those double dotty Swedes.

“Mine’s the tilde” ~ I offered. “It’s so wavy. So sexy.”

I can’t explain the philippic that then poured from my lips. First against the Brits:

“I hate it the way they leave punctuation outside quotation marks. Periods and commas look so cold and lonely out there. I think they deserve to be brought inside, comforted and embraced.”

Then against the semicolon: “I hate the way it looks. Like a colon that’s had a polyp removed.”

Then against the dash: “It’s the Kato Kaelin of punctuation marks. Always there. Lying around. So generic. So available.”

I rushed to see what British Gramazon, Lynne Truss, had to say about the hyphen in her best-seller “Eats, Shoots & Leaves.” While acknowledging the hyphen’s decline, she lists a handful of useful applications, including:

• When spelling out words: M-A-L-L-A-R-Y.

• With certain prefixes such as pro and anti: pro-Yankee, anti-Red Sox.

• When turning a noun phrase into an adjective: raw-meat rhetoric.

• To prevent ugliness: de-ice, rather than deice.

Thank you, Madame Truss. May I please have another swat with the paddle?

I have yet to see a description of the most creative way for writers to use the hyphen, and that is to craft a kind of charm bracelet of language, a string of discrete words linked together for contrast, drama, or humor: The baby wailed in his I’m-wearing-the-world’s-stinkiest-diaper sort of way.

To help sort all this out, I call to the witness stand, your honor, that great British author and statesman Winston Churchill: “I am in revolt about your hyphens. One must regard the hyphen as a blemish to be avoided wherever possible.” He recommends that when two words can be joined together, let no hyphen put them asunder: “My feeling is that you may run them together or leave them apart, except when nature revolts.”

“Beekeeper” seems like a natural union. “Seaurchin” does not.

Yes, Sir Winston, we are your allies. We will fight hyphens on the beaches. We will fight them in the fields. We will nevuh surrenduh!

These days, we tend to communicate via the keyboard as much as we do verbally. Often, we’re in a hurry, quickly dashing off emails with typos, grammatical shortcuts, and it’s expected. It’s no big deal. But other times, we try to invest a little care, avoiding mistakes so that there’s no confusion about what we’re saying and so that we look professional and reasonably bright.In general, we can slip up in a verbal conversation and get away with it. A colleague may be thinking, “Did she just say ‘irregardless’?”, but the words flow on, and our worst transgressions are carried away and with luck, forgotten.

That’s not the case with written communications. When we commit a grammatical crime in emails, discussion posts, reports, memos, and other professional documents, there’s no going back. We’ve just officially gone on record as being careless or clueless. And here’s the worst thing. It’s not necessary to be an editor or a language whiz or a spelling bee triathlete to spot such mistakes. They have a way of doing a little wiggle dance on the screen and then reaching out to grab the reader by the throat.Catching typos is easy (although not everyone does it). It’s the other stuff — correctly spelled but incorrectly wielded — that sneaks through and makes us look stupid. Here’s a quick review of some of the big ones.

#1: Loose for lose
No: I always loose the product key.Yes: I always lose the product key.

#2: It’s for its (or god forbid, its’)
No: Download the HTA, along with it’s readme file.Yes: Download the HTA, along with its readme file.No: The laptop is overheating and its making that funny noise again.Yes: The laptop is overheating and it’s making that funny noise again.

#3: They’re for their for there
No: The managers are in they’re weekly planning meeting.Yes: The managers are in their weekly planning meeting.No: The techs have to check there cell phones at the door, and their not happy about it.Yes: The techs have to check their cell phones at the door, and they’re not happy about it.

#4: i.e. for e.g.
No: Use an anti-spyware program (i.e., Ad-Aware).Yes: Use an anti-spyware program (e.g., Ad-Aware).Note: The term i.e. means “that is”; e.g. means “for example”. And a comma follows both of them.

#5: Effect for affect
No: The outage shouldn’t effect any users during work hours.Yes: The outage shouldn’t affect any users during work hours.Yes: The outage shouldn’t have any effect on users.Yes: We will effect several changes during the downtime.Note: Impact is not a verb. Purists, at least, beg you to use affect instead:No: The outage shouldn’t impact any users during work hours.Yes: The outage shouldn’t affect any users during work hours.Yes: The outage should have no impact on users during work hours.

#6: You’re for your
No: Remember to defrag you’re machine on a regular basis.Yes: Remember to defrag your machine on a regular basis.No: Your right about the changes.Yes: You’re right about the changes.

#7: Different than for different from
No: This setup is different than the one at the main office.Yes: This setup is different from the one at the main office.Yes: This setup is better than the one at the main office.

#8 Lay for lie
No: I got dizzy and had to lay down.Yes: I got dizzy and had to lie down.Yes: Just lay those books over there.

#9: Then for than
No: The accounting department had more problems then we did.Yes: The accounting department had more problems than we did.Note: Here’s a sub-peeve. When a sentence construction begins with If, you don’t need a then. Then is implicit, so it’s superfluous and wordy:No: If you can’t get Windows to boot, then you’ll need to call Ted.Yes: If you can’t get Windows to boot, you’ll need to call Ted.

#10: Could of, would of for could have, would have
No: I could of installed that app by mistake.Yes: I could have installed that app by mistake.No: I would of sent you a meeting notice, but you were out of town.Yes: I would have sent you a meeting notice, but you were out of town.

Courtesy: a forwarded e-mail message

1. Your vs. you’re

This one drives me insane, and it’s become extremely common among bloggers. All it takes to avoid this error is to take a second and think about what you’re trying to say.

“Your” is a possessive pronoun, as in “your car” or “your blog.” “You’re” is a contraction for “you are,” as in “you’re screwing up your writing by using your when you really mean you are.”

2. It’s vs. Its

This is another common mistake. It’s also easily avoided by thinking through what you’re trying to say.

“It’s” is a contraction of “it is” or “it has.” “Its” is a possessive pronoun, as in “this blog has lost its mojo.” Here’s an easy rule of thumb—repeat your sentence out loud using “it is” instead. If that sounds goofy, “its” is likely the correct choice.

3. There vs. Their

This one seems to trip up everyone occasionally, often as a pure typo. Make sure to watch for it when you proofread.

“There” is used many ways, including as a reference to a place (“let’s go there”) or as a pronoun (“there is no hope”). “Their” is a plural possessive pronoun, as in “their bags” or “their opinions.” Always do the “that’s ours!” test—are you talking about more than one person and something that they possess? If so, “their” will get you there.

4. Affect vs. Effect

To this day I have to pause and mentally sort this one out in order to get it right. As with any of the other common mistakes people make when writing, it’s taking that moment to get it right that makes the difference.

“Affect” is a verb, as in “Your ability to communicate clearly will affect your income immensely.” “Effect” is a noun, as in “The effect of a parent’s low income on a child’s future is well documented.” By thinking in terms of “the effect,” you can usually sort out which is which, because you can’t stick a “the” in front of a verb. While some people do use “effect” as a verb (“a strategy to effect a settlement”), they are usually lawyers, and you should therefore ignore them if you want to write like a human.

5. The Dangling Participle

The dangling participle may be the most egregious of the most common writing mistakes. Not only will this error damage the flow of your writing, it can also make it impossible for someone to understand what you’re trying to say.

Check out these two examples from Tom Sant’s book Persuasive Business Proposals:

After rotting in the cellar for weeks, my brother brought up some oranges.

Uhh… keep your decomposing brother away from me!

Featuring plug-in circuit boards, we can strongly endorse this server’s flexibility and growth potential.

Hmmm… robotic copy written by people embedded with circuit boards. Makes sense.

The problem with both of the above is that the participial phrase that begins the sentence is not intended to modify what follows next in the sentence. However, readers mentally expect it to work that way, so your opening phrase should always modify what immediately follows. If it doesn’t, you’ve left the participle dangling, as well as your readers.

P.S. You may find it amusing to know that I, like David Ogilvy, have never learned the formal rules of grammar. I learned to write by reading obsessively at an early age, but when it came time to learn the “rules,” I tuned out. If you show me an incorrect sentence, I can fix it, but if I need to know the technical reason why it was wrong in the first place, I go ask my wife.

Article by Brian Clark

Source:http://www.copyblogger.com/5-common-mistakes-that-make-you-look-dumb/#more-289

Punctuation Guide

If you have read the punctuation book “Eats, shoots and leaves” by Lynne Truss, here’s a companion to it: A PDF document with a brief outline of the rules of punctuation along with exercises( and the answers in the end).

“In one of the megachain bookstores, a woman asked a young clerk for the author of Like Water for Chocolate. After the salesperson had spent five minutes searching and still could not locate the famous title, the customer realized that the young man had been looking for Water from Chocolate.

It’s like … you know.

Nowadays, three speech patterns of the younger generation squeak like chalk across the blackboard of adult sensibilities:

• The sprinkling of like throughout sentences, like, you know what I’m saying?

• The use of another species of like as a replacement of the verb say: “I’m like, ‘Yeah, it’s like totally wicked awesome.’”

• The replacement of say, a verb of locution, by go, a verb of locomotion: “She goes, ‘Hey, that video game was totally cool.’” Linguists call this use “quotative,” an introduction to direct speech. “

By Richard Lederer on http://www.vocabula.com/index.asp

Periods, Exclamation marks and question marks

Attached is a PowerPoint presentation on the correct use of periods, exclamation points, and question marks.

Common Errors in English

Attached is a Word document outlining a few of the common errors in English. These can be easily avoided with a little awareness.

I often hear people saying  “I can’t able to do this”.  Well, the right way to put that would be “I am not able to do this” or “I’m unable to do this”.

Just one of my pet peeves:)

Apart from some very obvious differences between US English and UK English, such as the spellings(US: color, traveled, dialog–UK: colour, travelled, dialogue) and the use of the serial comma( in American English), here are some more differences.

1) Singular and Plural nouns:In US English, you would say ” The Clash is a well-known band” wheareas in UK English, it is “The Clash are a well-known band”.

 Similarly, in US English, one would say, Indianapolis is the champion, while in UK English, one would say Indianapolis are the champions.

2)Verbs: In US English, it is learned, dreamed etc. In UK English, it is learnt, dreamt.

 US: Lighted ;UK: Lit

US: Proven ; UK: Proved

US: Dive-Dove; Sneak-Snuck  ; UK: Not used.

3) US: I’ve just gotten home UK: I just got home

4) Shall is more commonly used in UK English.

5) US: meet with somebody  UK: meet somebody

6)US: Monday through Friday; UK: Monday to Friday

7)Dates in US spoken English: July 11th. Dates in UK spoken English: The 11th of July

 8) US: Colorado river   UK: River Thames

 9) US: the last letter of the alphabet is pronounced zee. In UK, it is pronounced zed.

10) US: sports section of the newspaper. UK: sport section

11) US: Mr. Sandburg  UK: Mr Sandburg

 12)Quotes: