Bloody Well Write

I love reading to my kids. No matter what else happened that day — good or bad — and no matter how many times I reprimanded them throughout the day, at the dinner table or while getting ready for bed, that time spent snuggling head to head, cheek to cheek, shoulder to shoulder while flipping through a book that we’ve read 67 times before is, as they say, priceless.

And that doesn’t even include all the weird mistakes we find in said books. They’re real gems, those mistakes.

Tonight’s story was P.D. Eastman’s “Go, Dog. Go!” It’s especially fun for a word nerd like me because I get to point out three types of punctuation in the title alone, and I get such a thrill when my 4-year-old exclaims, “Explanation point, Mom! I found one!”

She makes me so proud.

But something always bugged me about the wording inside. There are two dogs, one male and one female, who periodically meet throughout the book. Both dogs wear various hats. The girl dog asks the boy dog if he likes her hat, and he always says some version of “No, I don’t like that hat.” So they part, the girl dog looking miffed and the boy dog looking oblivious. The last meeting ends amicably because the girl dog has gone all out — and I mean all out — in designing her hat; the boy dog finally agrees that her hat is pretty cool.

Do you like my hat? (photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/table4five/4067671771/)

What got me, though, was how Eastman spelled good-by (without an ending “e”). It just doesn’t look right to me. And when that happens, that not-quite-right feeling, it’s best if I just look it up. And of course I did, but it took more than a year to do it (sort of like how I go into the kitchen with the intention of getting a glass of water but find dirty dishes in the sink, so I wash them and then realize that I need some bleach to clean up and go downstairs to get it but see an unfolded blanket in the living room, so I go ahead and fold it first, but then … you get the picture).

So I looked it up via Merriam-Webster. And I found good-bye (with a final “e”) to be the first (and thus most prominent) spelling. While good-by made the dictionary’s second spelling, it is still considered a variant.

And then I checked it out in the brand-spanking-new 2010 AP Stylebook (feel free to envy me) and, within those magical pages, goodbye exists, sans hyphen! Now that, my friends, made my day.

So goodbye it is, arrivederci,  auf wiedersehen and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Happy trails!

SAK