Bloody Well Write

It’s a crapshoot, I tell you.

I had just started in a new position at a new agency and was excited to start things off right with an updated AP Stylebook. Makes sense, I thought, since my own copy of the veritable writer’s bible was the 2007 version. Staying current with the 2010 version (even though it’s already 2011, thank you very much) seemed like a grand idea, especially since the 2011 version wasn’t going to be published for a few months yet.

The 2010 version, for those with inquiring minds, is the first book put out by the AP folks with website spelled as one word and all lowercase. That, my dear readers, was a monumental advancement. Ask any writer or editor you know (hell, you can even ask an opinionated designer or two — they’ll freely offer their belief system on the now-antiquated two-word Web site); he or she will probably be able to explain in four-part harmony the beneficial or detrimental nuances of using one word or two, depending on his or her preference.

So — back to the crapshoot.

As a writer and editor in my new digs at Armstrong|Shank Advertising, I thought it appropriate to get my hands on the latest AP Stylebook. The office manager said, “Hey! No problem. We’ll order one of those suckers right away.”

Cool!

It arrived lickety-split and I set to work, prepared for whatever odd grammar question could arise.

Those progressive heart candy makers must've known that the AP Stylebook editors would cave sooner or later (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/trmarch/3240265590/)

Then, just a few short days ago, the AP Stylebook folks threw a grammar wrench in my well-laid plans. They decided to cave under the pressure of the masses and allow email to take the place of e-mail.

And that, my friends, is huge. Even bigger news than Web site to website. It’s so huge because, in the history of the English language, no compound noun that starts with a single letter has lost its hyphen. For example:

• A-frame
• G-string
• S-curve
• T-ball
• T-shirt
• U-turn
• X-ray

It seems odd to me that the hyphen isn’t there, too, because for the two people who don’t yet know what electronic mail is, reading the word sans hyphen could theoretically make it sound like ehMAIL. And that, as the rest of us electronic whiz kids know, isn’t how it’s supposed to sound.

Why should e-mail lose its hyphen? My best guess is because the masses, in all their texting and tweeting and e-mailing (er, emailing) glory, decided that it’s just too darn difficult to add the hyphen to a word that gets typed or written on such a frequent basis, and those masses revolted to the point of forcing the hand of the AP Stylebook editors.

So — lazy wins.

And you know what? I’m sort of OK with that. I don’t really think it’s the wisest decision based on correctness, but I’ll be a much happier — and faster — tweeter with this new rule in place.

For the record: Email is correct to start a sentence; email is correct in all other sentence locations. Fun times.

Happy trails!

SAK

It’s a tough town, Los Angeles. Even for a famous and currently employed actor, it’s hard to catch a break in Hollywood.

Take Julia Louis-Dreyfus, for example. On Tuesday, May 4, CNN senior producer David Daniel walked by the newly embedded pink marble star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame honoring Louis-Dreyfus and noticed that the actor’s name had two mistakes in it:
• The “o” in Louis was missing.
• The hyphen between Louis and Dreyfus was missing.

Daniel reported the gaffe to the Walk of Fame press rep.

Four hours later, Louis-Dreyfus arrived to receive her star — the 2,407th — and found a temporary chiseled fix of her name on the star.

The Hollywood Walk of Fame (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/christianhaugen/3556803658/)

Her response?

“Right when you think you’ve made it, you get knocked down,” she joked. “It’s an ideal metaphor for how this business works.”

’Atta girl, JLD. Take it in stride.

The misspelled Hollywood star will be replaced with a corrected (and triple-proofread) version soon. Louis-Dreyfus asked for the botched star as a keepsake.

This isn’t the first time an actor’s name has been misspelled on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1993, Dick Van Dyke’s star had to be remade.

The upshot of this spelling blunder? David Daniel can now add Hollywood proofreader to his already-impressive résumé.

Happy trails!

SAK

I recently went up to Kansas City to see some friends, have some amazing food, catch a few comfy Z’s and see a football game. I did all that, but I also came home with a nice little surprise: a new topic for a Bloody Well Write entry.

First, a quick mention about the food. If you’re ever in Kansas City and are looking for a fantastic Italian meal in a quaint, romantic little ristorante, look no further than Carmen’s in Brookside. Ask to sit downstairs — I prefer the intimate atmosphere — and request some Italian Butter to start; it’s their version of olive oil and herbs, but I tell you that it is absolutely like none you have ever had.

I order off the menu, à la “When Harry Met Sally,” combining the cheese ravioli from one dish with the vodka tomato cream sauce from another, with a little fra diavolo thrown in to spice things up a bit. And ba-da-BING! It’s the tastiest, smoothest Italian around. No lie.

OK, so back to the grammar bit of this entry. So I’m in the hotel room — the one with the lush, fresh-white bedding and soaps the shape of leaves, with the cool city view — and I am piddling around, waiting until it’s time to go meet our friends. And I pick up this water bottle hang tag, with one word on it, for emphasis: revitalize.

That’s pretty cool. Decent marketing, colors fading from blue to snow white (very spalike), with some smallish print across the bottom: Westin® Hotels and Resorts. Nice little water logo. Then more words:

Nestle Pure Life Eco Shaped Bottles
Less Plastic. Better Enviornment.

So — reread that. See how many mistakes you can find in those two little lines.

By my count, I’d say that there are, at the minimum, five mistakes. There are more if you want to keep the lowercase consistency set by the headline (revitalize). And the periods? Don’t get me started. (OK, get me started. the headline doesn’t use a period, and neither does the first line, but the second line has two. Go figure.)

So what are the five mistakes?

1. There is no ® after Nestle.
2. There is no hyphen between Eco and Shaped.
3. The S in Shaped, since it should follow a hyphen, should be lowercase.
4. If there are two periods in the second line, there is no excuse why there shouldn’t be one at the end of the first line. (None of those groups of words are complete sentences.)
5. Enviornment. Seriously? This is for a national chain, for Pete’s sake. I know that it’s a four-syllable word, but my silly spell-checker caught it, so come ON.

I just checked out Nestle’s site to make sure that it uses a registered trademark (®) and, unbelievably, the site does not have one on the main page, even though products (such as Nestle® Cheerios®) have one next to the name. That sort of thing happens all the time. It blows my mind, especially on these enormous accounts.

I’ll end this little study in proofreading by saying that, despite this crazy hang tag, I had a really, really good time in Kansas City. And I’d even recommend the Westin Crown Center hotel to any friend or acquaintance. Just don’t plan on any solid ultra-light reading in the room.

Happy trails!

SAK

Jenny, I got your number.

Here’s how the AP Stylebook folks would like to see telephone numbers in print: 123-456-7890.

Ah, hyphens. Hey — at least they dropped the parentheses around the area code. Be happy.

Now, I know this doesn’t jibe with all the designers out there. And you know what? It doesn’t necessarily jibe with me, either. I’m a fan of dots (er, periods). I would rather see this: 123.456.7890.

So I guess what I’m promoting is this:

• If you or your company says that AP rules the proverbial roost and there should be absolutely no deviation, use the hyphens in your phone numbers. (And I’m so completely OK with that, as I do believe that AP has your back nearly every time, grammatically speaking.)

• If, on the other hand, you have a designer itching at the keypad to produce funky (or just non-hyphenated) art with numbers, use periods, stars, squares or whatever else floats that designer’s boat.

Just make it readable. After all, if you’re putting a phone number in print, you probably want people to be able to decipher that number and then call it, correct? Correct.

Happy trails!

SAK

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who love fish (as pets) and those who, uh, don’t really get it. The same might be said for dashes; some people love ’em like mad, and some people, uh, don’t really get ’em.

Me? I fall into opposite camps. I don’t really get the whole fish-as-pets thing. They’re sort of cool to watch for a while, but fish can’t snuggle. Fish can’t cheer you up by nuzzling your cheek when you’ve had a bad day. Fish can’t wake you up by walking up and down, up and down your legs.

On the other hand, I totally get dashes. I think they are fabulous. They clarify. They add visual interest. They inadvertently amuse by infuriating the designers you work with. They give your brain a tweak while you’re writing.

What’s the fuss? Heck, what’s the real story? (There is a story here, but I’ll get to the fish later.)

There are two kinds of dashes: en dashes and em dashes. (Hyphens are not really dashes and are thus relegated to a separate entry.) The em dash began as the length of a “typical” m and the en dash began as the length of a “typical” n. These length conventions are not necessarily followed in these days of a gazillion font styles. When using an em dash, though, almost always include a space on each side of the dash. (Attributions are exempt.)

The em dash is used to set off parenthetical statements. Although commas and parentheses can be used for the same function, the em dash is — by far — the most emphatic separator of the three. It can also indicate a sharp transition: The coyote must attempt to catch the roadrunner — but at what cost?
The em dash can also be used for a series within a phrase: His menu listed the pies — pumpkin, blueberry and mud — that he made weekly.

Use the em dash in attributions, without a space: Oh, I don’t think I’m a lot dumber than you think that I thought I was once. —Ben Stiller as White Goodman in “Dodgeball”

The en dash is used in ranges:
• 45–50 clowns
• 11:00 a.m.–2:30 p.m.
• Ages 2–3
• November–December 1967

The en dash is also used in relationships, including compound adjective situations. These usages, however, can depend on your level of comfort in deviating from AP Stylebook guidelines. AP does not recognize en dashes as valid. So in the following instances, a plain, ol’ hyphen will suffice, but the more adventurous writers (and designers) can use the en dash for a slightly more fine-tuned approach:

• KU beat Nebraska 76–39 (whoomp!)
• New York–London flight
• A 5–4 vote

As far as I know — and that’s not very far when a PC’s concerned — there are no shortcuts to create an en or em dash on a PC. Here’s how to create the dashes via computer longhand for both a PC and a Mac:

• Go to Insert in the program menu and open up Symbol.
• Highlight the appropriate dash located there.
• Click on Insert.

Macs do have shortcuts, so you don’t have to move your mouse around through various windows.
Here’s how to create the dashes on a Mac:
• En: Option+hyphen
• Em: Shift+option+hyphen

Gee, I almost feel as if I could pass for IT support sometimes. Lasts for about three seconds before my head starts to implode.

So — what’s my big fish story?

Well, I was working at another ad agency in town when I became engaged (to one of the agency IT guys — OK, you got me). Our co-workers threw us a shower, and one gal — the one we all fondly referred to as Martha Stewart because she was crazy-creative in all creative endeavors — gave us a pair of goldfish. She had already named them En Dash and Em Dash, in my honor as the agency editor-proofreader. Cool, funky gift, not to be forgotten.

En Dash and Em Dash in better days

I took them home in their baggies and put them into a small bowl. The next morning, I thought it would be a good idea to give them some fresh water. Fresh water is good, right? Right, I thought. I went to work and came home. My roommate told me to look at the fish, because they were “hanging out” at the bottom of the bowl. Well, they couldn’t be dead, I thought, because dead means floating, right? Right.

I looked at the bowl. Those fish weren’t floating, that’s for sure. But they were sideways. At the bottom of the bowl. Not swimming. Just … sideways. Ugh. I had killed En Dash and Em Dash, in less than 24 hours.

Imagine my horror at finding out that you can’t just use tap water for fish. How the heck was I supposed to know that, the fish virgin that I was? I felt horrible. So burial was my responsibility for these two unlucky souls. I took them to my roommate’s bathroom and — whoosh — they were gone. Just couldn’t bring myself to flush them down my own toilet. Isn’t that nuts?

I never told our Martha Stewart friend. I couldn’t bare the embarrassment, frankly. Now, almost six years later, I’m hoping that, if and when she reads this entry, she can forgive me for being such a cad. SD, I’m sorry!

OK, that’s it for today. I’m going to go re-mourn the loss of the goldfish while listening to some em dash–free Arlo.

Happy trails!

SAK

A hyphen is that short, little bugger that joins two or more words to form an adjective and, at the very same time, makes middle schoolers’ heads spin. Really, it is nothing more than a clarifier, making the very complicated English language a little less complicated for the reader. At least, that’s its intent. The writer, though, may have something else to say about it. Ahem.

Since the hyphen is trying to simplify our lives, let’s give it a chance by trying to understand where it’s coming from. (Yes, yes, “from where it is coming” is the oh-so-proper way to write but, really, who talks that way anymore? Ending in a preposition is completely acceptable for all but the highest of highbrows. Onward and upward.)

The hyphen is used to form various compound words. If in doubt about adding a hyphen to two words, look for ambiguity that may lurk: Bob will speak to small businessmen sounds as if the businessmen are either vertically challenged or small-boned; the sentence probably should read like this: Bob will speak to small-business men. If adding a hyphen would clear up a misunderstanding, the hyphen probably belongs between the two words.

The problem with this second sentence is that women are presumably not going to be in or allowed at this meeting, which raises other ethical and moral questions. If you are 100 percent sure that no women will be in the audience, leave it as is; but if women will be present, you can change it to Bob will speak to small-business men and women or Bob will speak to small-business owners. Problem solved.

Many combinations that are hyphenated before a noun are not hyphenated when they occur after a noun: A full-time employee gets an assigned parking space. He works full time.

You can also use a hyphen to avoid duplicated vowels and triple consonants: anti-intellectual, shell-like. These are tricky, though, because the AP Stylebook does not always follow Merriam-Webster’s recommended spelling.

For example, AP uses a hyphen in pre-emptive, but Merriam-Webster does not: preemptive. What’s a writer to do? I’d say to use your best judgment. My best judgment says to follow AP, except that AP is sometimes the last style guide to make a change, which leads me to ultimately recommend following Merriam-Webster’s spelling. As an added incentive, the AP Stylebook states,  “… follow Webster’s New World, hyphenating if not listed there.”  I use Merriam-Webster Online; preemptive is there, so that’s what I use.

Hyphens also help to break up a word that must be carried over to the next line due to space restrictions, such as in the short columns of a magazine article. But if you don’t have to use them, don’t, for the simple fact that they tend to clunk up the readability of the piece.

How often should you use hyphens? As often as necessary to make the copy clear and interesting. All those hyphenated words acting as adjectives can spice up your writing, that’s true. But just as too many spices can gunk up the flavor of homemade soup, so can too many hyphenated words make your copy tank. You want your writing to be interesting and engaging, not a just a display of how cleverly you can write.

That being said, I’m a fan of hyphens. Not an over-the-top, need-to-be-medicated kind of fan, but a fan nonetheless. I like to choose clarification over ambiguity. I dig creative, unexpected writing. And the inner designer in me likes the visual aspect of the joined words — sort of breaks up the flow of letters on the page (like my other good friend, the em dash — love the em dash, maybe a little too much).

It’s time to address one of my grammar pet peeves: hyphen usage with -ly words. There are very few instances when a word ending in -ly actually needs a hyphen. Examples:

• A word ending in -ly (such as family) in which the ending -ly is not a suffix added on to make the root word an adverb or adjective: A family-friendly restaurant is correct. (Family is a root word that happens to end in -ly, so it is OK to have a hyphen follow it.)
•  The case of multiple hyphenated words, no matter if there is an -ly word included or not: Sid penned a not-so-creatively-written poem.

Other uses for the hyphen include numerals, such as to separate figures:
• Odds: The odds were 5-3.
• Ratios: The ratio was 10-to-1. It was a 10-1 ratio.
• Scores: KU won 88-64.
• Vote tabulations: The House voted 230-205.

Another rule to consider is suspensive hyphenation. It connects two words or numbers to a noun without losing the reader: He expected to have a 10- to 15-year career in pro wrestling.

Finally, there is e-mail. Yes, with a hyphen. That one, unless the stars realign and the earth swallows up logic and spits it back out as the New Word, probably ain’t gonna change. You see, e-mail stands for electronic mail. That e is a placeholder for a full word. As Bill Walsh of The Washington Post so eloquently put it in his book “Lapsing Into a Comma” (Page 16, if you’re curious):

“No initial-based term in the history of the English language has ever evolved to form a solid word — a few are split and the rest are hyphenated. Look at A-frame, B-movie, …H-bomb, I-beam, … X-ray, Y-chromosome, Z particle and scores of other such compounds.”

Take that, email.

Happy trails!

SAK

Addition to above entry

This post is a terrific example of why I try to choose words carefully. In discussing e-mail versus email, I wrote:

Finally, there is e-mail. Yes, with a hyphen. That one, unless the stars realign and the earth swallows up logic and spits it back out as the New Word, probably ain’t gonna change.

Note the word probably. Good thing, that word. Because in March 2011, the AP Stylebook decided to change the spelling to email, without the hyphen. Really shocking thing, that change, but it just goes to show:

• Nothing but death is certain (yeah, I’m not putting taxes in that equation).
• Public pressure counts for something.

Happy trails!

SAK

This is going to be an übershort blog entry, but it proves an important point.

The point — for me anyway — is that you can learn something new every day. Here’s what I just learned about those calls you place to friends and family who are far, far away.

Long-distance, when it refers to telephone calls, always gets a hyphen — every time. So it should really be long-distance, whether you’re using it as an adjective (I need to place a long-distance call) or an adverb (He called her long-distance). Wild, huh?

When you’re using long distance to refer to something other than a phone call, the use determines the hyphen’s necessity: She ran a long distance. They maintained a long-distance romance.

That sneaky hyphen. I had no idea.

Feel free to write in and comment on something that you learned today, grammar-related or no.

Happy trails!

SAK