{"id":10677,"date":"2011-05-24T16:19:26","date_gmt":"2011-05-24T16:19:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/05\/24\/hyphenation-and-other-punctilios-of-grammar\/"},"modified":"2011-05-24T16:19:26","modified_gmt":"2011-05-24T16:19:26","slug":"hyphenation-and-other-punctilios-of-grammar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/05\/24\/hyphenation-and-other-punctilios-of-grammar\/","title":{"rendered":"Hyphenation and Other Punctilios of Grammar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Bill,<\/span><\/p>\n

Being someone who uses gerunds not only correctly but elegantly and bothers to hyphenate compound modifiers, you'll appreciate, I hope, my noting that '20 year old' should be '20 year-old' because it is a hyphenated noun. Were ;">we to make his age adjectival by the addition of an extra noun, though, an extra hypen would be required, as in 'the 20-year-old man'.<\/span><\/p>\n

Best wishes,
Will. 
<\/tt><\/span><\/p>\n

I accept the correction, Will.  But there is a residual puzzle. How can '20' modify the noun 'year-old'?  There is also the question whether I should have written 'twenty' instead of '20.'   This is clearly bad writing: 'He gave me 5 books.'  Correct is: 'He gave me five books.'  But few will write, 'He gave me five thousand four hundred and seventy seven books' instead of 'He gave me 5,477 books.'<\/tt><\/span><\/p>\n

There is no end to punctiliousness once you start down that road.  For example, I just used 'you' in a slightly nonstandard way.  And as for hyphens, should we follow the Teutonic tendency of letting them fall into desuetude? 'Nonstandard' or 'non-standard'?  'Truth maker' or 'truth-maker' or 'truthmaker'?<\/tt><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span>Do you say, 'The engine whose plugs are fouled?' or 'The engine the plugs of which are fouled'?  I prefer the latter despite its stiltedness.  An engine is not a person.  And if you don't agree with me on this point, will you say it is acceptable to write, 'The man that was shot' rather than 'The man who was shot'?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

'She hanged herself' is correct.  But few nowadays are observant of the 'hanged'\/'hung' distinction.<\/span><\/p>\n

But should a writer like me, who aspires to a certain muscular elegance in his style, be using a slightly quaint and archaic, and perhaps even obsolete word such as 'nowadays'?<\/span><\/p>\n

I distinguish 'each other' from 'one another' and call down my anathema upon those who write like this:  'Due to  their almost exclusive association with each other<\/strong>, liberals reinforce their political correctness.'<\/span><\/p>\n

And so it goes. <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Bill, Being someone who uses gerunds not only correctly but elegantly and bothers to hyphenate compound modifiers, you'll appreciate, I hope, my noting that '20 year old' should be '20 year-old' because it is a hyphenated noun. Were ;">we to make his age adjectival by the addition of an extra noun, though, an extra … Continue reading “Hyphenation and Other Punctilios of Grammar”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}