Book Sale Continues + hyphenation

hyphenation
The Chicago Manual of Style contains a huge chart listing various sorts of phrases that are or are not to be hyphenated. Consult such a reference source for a thorough-going account of this matter, but you may be able to get by with a few basic rules. An adverb/adjective combination in which the adverb ends in “-ly” is never hyphenated: “His necktie reflected his generally grotesque taste.” Other sorts of adverbs are followed by a hyphen when combined with an adjective: “His long-suffering wife finally snapped and fed it through the office shredder.” The point here is that “long” modifies “suffering,” not “wife.” When both words modify the same noun, they are not hyphenated. A “light-green suitcase” is pale in color, but a “light green suitcase” is not heavy. In the latter example “light” and “green” both modify “suitcase,” so no hyphen is used.

Adjectives combined with nouns having an “-ed” suffix are hyphenated: “Frank was a hot-headed cop.”

Hyphenate ages when they are adjective phrases involving a unit of measurement: “Her ten-year-old car is beginning to give her trouble.” A girl can be a “ten-year-old” (“child” is implied). But there are no hyphens in such an adjectival phrase as “Her car is ten years old.” In fact, hyphens are generally omitted when such phrases follow the noun they modify except in phrases involving “all” or “self” such as “all-knowing” or “self-confident.” Fractions are almost always hyphenated when they are adjectives: “He is one-quarter Irish and three-quarters Nigerian.” But when the numerator is already hyphenated, the fraction itself is not, as in “ninety-nine and forty-four one hundredths.” Fractions treated as nouns are not hyphenated: “He ate one quarter of the turkey.”

A phrase composed of a noun and a present participle (“-ing” word) must be hyphenated: “The antenna had been climbed by thrill-seeking teenagers who didn’t realize the top of it was electrified.”

These are the main cases in which people are prone to misuse hyphens. If you can master them, you will have eliminated the vast majority of such mistakes in your writing. Some styles call for space around dashes (a practice of which I strongly disapprove), but it is never proper to surround hyphens with spaces, though in the following sort of pattern you may need to follow a hyphen with a space: “Stacy’s pre- and post-haircut moods.”

 
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Two books on sale this month, $15 each with free shipping:

    

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There is a new blog post on hyphenation.
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We bid farewell to the podcast some time ago, but you may still listen to all the episodes you may have missed, including a timely one on greeting people this time of year.

This Week: On the podcast, a history of American comics (Part 1) + hyphens & dashes

hyphens & dashes
Dashes are longer than hyphens, but since some browsers do not reliably interpret the code for dashes, they are usually rendered on the Web as they were on old-fashioned typewriters, as double hyphens (like this: --). Dashes tend to separate elements, and hyphens to link them. Few people would substitute a dash for a hyphen in an expression like “a quick-witted scoundrel,” but the opposite is common. In a sentence like “Astrud—unlike Inger—enjoyed vacations in Spain rather than England,” one often sees hyphens incorrectly substituted for dashes.

When you are typing for photocopying or direct printing, it is a good idea to learn how to type a true dash instead of the double hyphen. In old-fashioned styles, dashes (but never hyphens) are surrounded by spaces — like this. With modern computer output, which emulates professional printing, this makes little sense. Skip the spaces unless your editor or teacher insists on them.
There are actually two kinds of dashes. The most common is the “em dash” (theoretically the width of a letter M—but this is often not the case). To connect numbers, it is traditional to use an “en dash” which is somewhat shorter, but not as short as a hyphen: “cocktails 5–7 p.m.” All modern computers can produce en dashes, but few people know how to type them (try searching your program’s help menu). For most purposes you don’t have to worry about them, but if you are preparing material for print, you should learn how to use them.

In HTML code the code for an em dash is — and – is the code for an en dash.


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This week on the podcast we talk about Paul’s great interest in comics and cover the early history of American comic strips.

n’/’n’: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Tuesday, December 8, 2015

n’/’n’ 
In your restaurant’s ad for “Big ’n’ Juicy Burgers,” remember that the apostrophes substitute for both omitted letters in “and”—the A and the D—so strictly speaking it’s not enough to use just one, as in “Big n’ Juicy.”

By so doing, you’ll improve on the usage of McDonald’s, which has actually created the registered trademark “Big N’ Tasty.”

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End-of-year sale on the book: Use the coupon code FIFTEEN to get Common Errors in English Usage 3rd Edition at $4 off the cover price. Order through wmjasco.com.

This is the tenth year of the Common Errors in English Usage calendar. To celebrate, we are bringing back some of our favorite interesting, funny, but sometimes merely silly entries through the years before going on hiatus in 2016.

Enjoy the calendar? Buy the book!

joint possessives: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Sunday, October 18, 2015

joint possessives 
When writing about jointly owned objects, people often fret about where to place apostrophes. The standard pattern is to treat the two partners as a single unit—a couple—and put an apostrophe only after the last name: “John and Jane’s villa,” “Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.” Add more owners and you still use only one apostrophe: “Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice’s party.”

If each person owns his or her own item, then each owner gets an apostrophe: “John’s and Jane’s cars“ (each of them separately owns a car).

But when you begin to introduce pronouns the situation becomes much murkier. “Jane and his villa” doesn’t sound right because it sounds like Jane and the villa make a pair. The most common solution—“Jane’s and his villa”—violates the rule about using the possessive form only on the last partner in the ownership. However, most people don’t care and using this form won’t raise too many eyebrows.

How about when you have two pronouns? “She and his villa” definitely won’t work. “Her and his villa” might get by, but if you say “his and her villa” you inevitably remind people of the common phrase “his and hers” with a very different meaning: male and female, as in a sale on “his and hers scarves.”

If you have time to think ahead, especially when writing, the best solution is to avoid this sort of construction altogether by rewording: “Jane and John have a villa outside Florence. Their villa is beautiful.” “The villa owned by Jane and him is beautiful.” “The villa is Jane’s and his.” “The villa that he and she own is beautiful.”

Things get tricky when using personal pronouns instead of names. Note that “I’s” is not an acceptable substitute for “my.” It’s not “directions to my wife and I’s house,” but if you say “directions to my wife and my house” it sounds as if you were providing directions to your wife plus directions to your house. Stick with simpler constructions like “our house.”

Other awkward examples you might want to avoid: “your and my shares” (better: “your share and mine”), “their and our shares” (better: their share and ours”), and “his and her shares” (not too bad, but “his share and hers” is better).

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Episode 3 of The Common Errors in English Usage Podcast ("Blogging, Data, and Grammar") is now available.

This is the tenth year of the Common Errors in English Usage calendar. To celebrate, we are bringing back some of our favorite interesting, funny, but sometimes merely silly entries through the years before going on hiatus in 2016.

Enjoy the calendar? Buy the book!

dialate/dilate: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Thursday, April 2, 2015

dialate/dilate 
The influence of “dial” causes many people to mispronounce and misspell “dilate” by adding an extra syllable.

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This is the ten-year anniversary of the Common Errors in English Usage calendar. To celebrate, we are bringing back some of our favorite interesting, funny, but sometimes merely silly entries through the years before going on hiatus in 2016.

Enjoy the calendar? Buy the book!

here’s/here are: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Wednesday, September 10, 2014

here’s/here are
Sentences like “here’s the gerbil” are shortened ways of saying “here is the gerbil.” But “here’s the gerbils” is wrong because “here’s” is not a contraction of “here are.” In speaking we might say “here’re the gerbils,“ but we probably would not use the contracted form in writing unless we were trying to convey the effect of spoken English. Instead write “here are the gerbils.”

their’s/theirs: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Thursday, August 28, 2014

their’s/theirs
Like the related possessive pronouns “ours,” “his,” and “hers,” “theirs” does not take an apostrophe.

cents: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Monday, July 7, 2014

cents
On a sign displaying a cost of 29 cents for something, the price can be written as “.29,” as “$.29,” or as “29¢,” but don’t combine the two forms. “.29¢” makes no sense, and “$.29¢” is worse.

quotation marks: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Thursday, July 25, 2013

quotation marks 
The examples below are set off in order to avoid confusion over the use of single and double quotation marks.

There are many ways to go wrong with quotation marks. They are often used ironically:

She ran around with a bunch of “intellectuals.”

The quotation marks around “intellectuals” indicate that the writer believes that these are in fact so-called intellectuals, not real intellectuals at all. The ironic use of quotation marks is very much overdone, and is usually a sign of laziness indicating that the writer has not bothered to find the precise word or expression necessary.

Advertisers unfortunately tend to use quotation marks merely for emphasis:

“FRESH” TOMATOES
59 CENTS A POUND

The influence of the more common ironic usage tends to make the reader question whether these tomatoes are really fresh. Underlining, bold lettering, all caps—there are several less ambiguous ways to emphasize words than placing them between quotation marks.

In American usage, single quotation marks are used normally only for quoted words and phrases within quotations.

Angela had the nerve to tell me “When I saw ‘BYOB’ on your invitation, I assumed it meant ‘Bring Your Old Boyfriend’.”

British usage has traditionally been to reverse this relationship, with single quotation marks being standard and double ones being used only for quotations within quotations. (The English also call quotation marks “inverted commas,” though only the opening quotation mark is actually inverted—and flipped, as well.) However, usage in the UK is shifting toward the US pattern, (see, for instance, The Times of London); though the printing of fiction tends to adhere to the older British pattern, where US students are most likely to encounter it.

Single quotation marks are also used in linguistic, phonetic, and philosophical studies to surround words and phrases under discussion; but the common practice of using single quotation marks for short phrases and words and double ones for complete sentences is otherwise an error.

Block quotations like this should not be surrounded by any quotation marks at all. (A passage this short should not be rendered as a block quotation; you need at least three lines of verse or five lines of prose to justify a block quotation.) Normally you should leave extra space above and below a block quotation.

When quoting a long passage involving more than one paragraph, quotation marks go at the beginning of each paragraph, but at the end of only the final one. Dialogue in which the speaker changes with each paragraph has each speech enclosed in its own quotation marks.

Titles of books and other long works that might be printed as books are usually italicized (except, for some reason, in newspapers); but the titles of short poems, stories, essays, and other works that would be more commonly printed within larger works (anthologies, collections, periodicals, etc.) are enclosed in quotation marks.

There are different patterns for regulating how quotation marks relate to other punctuation. Find out which one your teacher or editor prefers and use it, or choose one of your own liking, but stick to it consistently. One widely accepted authority in America is the Chicago Manual of Style, whose guidelines are outlined below. English, Canadian, Australian and other writers in British-influenced countries should be aware that their national patterns will be quite different, and variable.

In standard American practice, commas are placed inside quotation marks:

I spent the morning reading Faulkner’s “Barn Burning,” which seemed to be about a pyromaniac.

Periods are also normally placed inside quotation marks (with the exception of terms that appear in single quotation marks in linguistic, phonetic, and philosophical studies, as mentioned earlier). Colons and semicolons, however, are preceded by quotation marks.

If the quoted matter ends with a question mark or exclamation point, it is placed inside the quotation marks:

John asked, “When’s dinner?”

But if it is the enclosing sentence which asks the question, then the question mark comes after the quotation marks:

What did she mean, John wondered, by saying “as soon as you make it”?

Similarly:

Fred shouted, “Look out for the bull!”

but

When I was subsequently gored, all Timmy said was, “This is kinda boring”!

It is unfortunately true that many standard character sets—including ASCII and basic HTML—lack true quotation marks which curl to enclose the quoted matter, substituting instead ugly “inch” or “ditto” marks. If you are writing HTML for the Web, you need to turn off the “smart quotes” feature in your word processor which curls quotation marks and apostrophes. Leaving curled quotation marks and apostrophes in text intended for the Web causes ugly gibberish which will make your writing hard to read.

If you would like to include proper curled quotation marks and apostrophes in your HTML code you can write “ (curled double open quote), ” (curled double close quote), ‘ (curled single open quote), and ’ (curled close quote). Most contemporary browsers can properly interpret these codes, though they used to cause trouble for people using older browser versions.

prepone: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Saturday, March 2, 2013

prepone 
South Asian speakers have evolved the logical word “prepone” to mean the opposite of “postpone”: to move forward in time. It’s a handy word, but users of it should be aware that those unfamiliar with their dialect will be baffled by it.

laissez-faire: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Friday, February 22, 2013

laissez-faire
The mispronunciation “lazy-fare” is almost irresistible in English, but this is a French expression meaning “let it be” or, more precisely, “the economic doctrine of avoiding state regulation of the economy,” and it has retained its French pronunciation (though with an English R): “lessay fare.” It is most properly used as an adjective, as in “laissez-faire capitalism,” but is also commonly used as if it were a noun phrase: “the Republican party advocates laissez-faire.”

laxidaisical/lackadaisical: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Wednesday, November 28, 2012

laxidaisical/lackadaisical
“Alack!” originally meant something like “Alas!” It bore connotations of dissatisfaction or shame. “Alack the day!” meant at first “may the day be shamed in which this awful thing has happened.” Later, it came to be abbreviated “lack-a-day” and used to express mere surprise.

The expression was gradually weakened, shifting from expressions of anguish to resigned despair, to languid indifference. The end result is the modern form “lackadaisical,” which conveys a lack of enthusiasm—a casual, perfunctory way of doing things.

This final meaning suggests “laxness” to some people who then misspell the word “laxadaisical,” but this is nonstandard. 

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flustrated/frustrated: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Sunday, June 10, 2012

flustrated/frustrated
You may be flustered when you’re frustrated, but there is no such word as “flustrated.”

conjunction, beginning a sentence with a: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Wednesday, March 28, 2012

conjunction, beginning a sentence with a
It offends those who wish to confine English usage in a logical straitjacket that writers often begin sentences with “and” or “but.” True, one should be aware that many such sentences would be improved by becoming clauses in compound sentences; but there are many effective and traditional uses for beginning sentences thus. One example is the reply to a previous assertion in a dialogue: “But, my dear Watson, the criminal obviously wore expensive boots or he would not have taken such pains to scrape them clean.” Make it a rule to consider whether your conjunction would repose more naturally within the previous sentence or would lose in useful emphasis by being demoted from its position at the head of a new sentence.