The Mechanics

Good morning all.

I want to elaborate on my discussion from last week on compound adjectives. Anne referred me to an interesting article by Charles McGrath titled Death-Knell. Or Death Knell. In his article McGrath made an interesting point that I didn't mention last week.

Not only are compound adjectives more economical as far as space is concerned, but they also give the reader a clarification that is sometimes very necessary indeed.

For example, a slippery-eel salesman sells slippery eels, but a slippery eel salesman is just a 'slippery' eel salesman, in other words he takes your money and slips away. This is a very good point.

As I have said before I am a punctuation minimalist (most of the time) and think less is more. In a case such as the next sentence I would opt for a hyphen-free sentence. 'A high school student went to the prom.' It is unlikely that anyone would assume that the student was smoking a joint in this sentence. Some people would be more comfortable with 'high-school student' I realize, but in the above example I really think that would be overkill. (I'm sure some people would disagree.)

McGrath discusses the fact that the trend is towards removing a lot of hyphens in words that have commonly been hyphenated. The words are either then split in two, such as ice cream and water bed, or have been combined into one word, such as bumblebee, for example.

This is a trend that makes sense to me. Again less is more and, though hyphens can be economical, they could also become ridiculous if an article was littered with them.

I know that many editors have to follow their company style guides, but a style guide should be just that 'a guide,' not the law! Some common sense should always be added to any editorial debate and if there is no ambiguity in meaning I say leave the hyphen out!

Have a great day everyone! A demain.