Kirk Mahoney . com

I saw this in a message from a company.

Problem:
The hyphen does not belong in this phrase.

Explanation:
The company in question was announcing that it had agreed to exchange some assets with another company.

The company stated in its announcement that the deal had not been approved by regulators.

So the company was emphasizing to readers that it would have to continue to operate as if the deal had never been made.

(Quote) “at arm’s length” (unquote) — with no hyphen — is the phrase that essentially describes a business/legal relationship in which the two parties make sure that they treat one another in the same way that they would treat other competitors.

While it is true that “arm’s length” must be hyphenated to form a compound modifier of a noun — as in (quote) “an arm’s-length transaction” (unquote) — it makes no sense to insert a hyphen in the phrase (quote) “at arm’s length from” (unquote).

I believe that attorneys were involved in approving the aforementioned company’s announcement and that these attorneys included the hyphen between “arm’s” and “length” because they are very accustomed to using these two words to modify a noun.

Solution:
“… as a separate business at arm’s length from …”

My wife and I saw this at the bottom of an invoice a few weeks ago.

Beyond noticing that the preposition “For” should not have been capitalized, we both had a gut reaction to the hyphen in “Thank-You”.

The reaction was that the hyphenated form of the imperative “Thank You” felt like something that we used to see a few decades ago.

Of course, she or I today would use the hyphenated “Thank-You” when those two words together modify a noun, as in (quote) “Thank-You Cards” (unquote).

But neither of us would hyphenate “Thank You” when using those two words as an imperative (in, say, a headline).

I saw no matches when I searched Google for the use of the hyphenated “thank-you” as an imperative, but I admit that it was not a very deep search.

What I now wonder is whether the hyphenated imperative form in my wife’s and my memories comes from seeing typesetters’ mistakes or is based on a style that has gone out of favor.

Do you recall seeing the hyphenated imperative “Thank-You” years ago?

Do you believe that this form was a mistake or that it was a commonly accepted form?

Please let me know, and I will elaborate on this topic in a future post.

I saw these two headlines in a TV ad two weeks ago:

• “Police Impounded Cars”
• “Bank Foreclosed Homes”

The television commercial was intended to advertise cars and homes available at deep discounts.

In other words, the TV ad was promoting two items: (a) cars that had been impounded by police; (b) homes that had been foreclosed by banks.

But the lack of punctuation was troubling.

If the headlines were intended to be phrases, then hyphens should have been used to create modifiers of the words “Cars” and “Homes”:

• “Police-Impounded Cars”
• “Bank-Foreclosed Homes”

Unfortunately for the advertiser, the common style for punctuation of headlines is to omit periods at the ends of sentences that form headlines.

So the common expectation of viewers of the ad was that the headlines were sentences, like so:

• “Police Impounded Cars.”
• “Bank Foreclosed Homes.”

But the advertiser was promoting cars and homes, not making news announcements.

So the advertiser should have punctuated the headlines as phrases.

I instant-messaged this to a friend last week.

Problem:
The statement is ambiguous without a hyphen.

Explanation:
What does (quote) “Face time matters.” (unquote) mean to you?

Soon after I instant-messaged this statement, I realized that my friend could interpret what I wrote in two ways.

One interpretation of the statement is that I was commanding or imploring my friend to seriously consider (quote) “time matters” (unquote).

In other words, one interpretation of (quote) “Face time matters.” (unquote) is that this was an imperative statement.

The other interpretation of (quote) “Face time matters.” (unquote) is that I was telling my friend that (quote) “face time” (unquote) with other people makes a difference.

These two interpretations are possible because the word “face” is both a noun and a verb and because the word “matters” is both a noun and a verb.

The solution comes from using a hyphen to indicate whether one is talking about about (quote) “time matters” (unquote) or about (quote) “face time” (unquote).

Written schematically, what we have is [NOUN|VERB] NOUN [VERB|NOUN], and any sentence that follows this pattern will be ambiguous without a hyphen between the first and second words or between the second and third words.

Some might argue that using an exclamation mark instead of a period in (quote) “Face time matters.” (unquote) would make it clear to the reader that the statement is an imperative.

Unlike Spanish, which tends to favor the use of exclamation marks for imperative statements, American English seems to have dropped the common use of exclamation marks for imperatives a long time ago.

Using a period instead of an exclamation mark at the end of an imperative statement is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to write a period than it is to write an exclamation mark (one stroke versus two strokes). And it is simpler to type a period than it is to type an exclamation mark (one key versus two keys).

So the absence of the exclamation mark does not assure American readers that the statement is not an imperative.

But I would counter-argue that the presence an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence with this pattern does not ensure that the sentence will be interpreted as imperative. Instead, the exclamation mark could be interpreted as turning a declarative statement into an exclamatory statement.

Solution:

• Use (quote) “Face time-matters.” (unquote) — with a hyphen between “time” and “matters” — to ensure that the statement is interpreted as an imperative sentence about facing matters of time.
• Use (quote) “Face-time matters.” (unquote) — with a hyphen between “Face” and “time” — to ensure that the statement is interpreted as a declarative sentence about the importance of spending face-to-face time with others.

I hope that you saw the latest news here.

Nineteen Common Mistakes that People Make with Hyphens, my new book valued by reader consensus at $19.97, is absolutely free here now!

I know: I might be crazy to give it away, but I think that you are going to enjoy this product so much that you are going to decide to maybe be a customer of some of my other products in the future.

And one of my upcoming books is a version of Nineteen Common Mistakes that People Make with Hyphens that will be specially formatted for the Amazon Kindle.

Having just gotten a Kindle 2, I am stoked about the way that the Kindle has revolutionized the way that people like you and me can find, buy, and read books.

That gets to my other reason why I am giving away Nineteen Common Mistakes that People Make with Hyphens absolutely free.

You see, I want you to get the book, read it, and then let me know a fair price for the Kindle version of the book.

As a thank-you, I will then send you a $27 book titled Words to Profits.

But you have to start the ball rolling.

Request my hyphenation book today!

I saw this last night on the Fox TV program “Hell’s Kitchen”.

Problem:
The subtitle editor split the word “tomorrow” in the wrong place when making it span two lines.

Explanation:
The TV program “Hell’s Kitchen” sometimes must display subtitles because the audio was poorly recorded or because the producers believe that an American audience will not understand chef Gordon Ramsay or one of the contestants in the program.

I do not recall the entire subtitle, but at one point during last night’s episode someone said a sentence that contained the word “tomorrow”.

If a sentence does not fit on one line in a subtitle, the subtitle editor must make the sentence run across two or more subtitle lines.

I put the vertical bar (|) in the title of this blog post to indicate that this is where the subtitle editor chose to split the word “tomorrow” such that the first part ended one line and the second part started the next line.

Because subtitles are added in post-production and are not the equivalent of closed captioning of a live event, the subtitle editor should have had time to compose each subtitle correctly.

So it seems to me that the editor did not know how to split the word “tomorrow” into two lines.

1. The editor split the word at the wrong letter.
2. The editor failed to include a hyphen at the end of the first part of the split word.

A dictionary tells the reader where to split any word, and a hyphen is always required at the end of the first part of the split word.

Solution:
“… to- | morrow …”

I saw this in a promotion.

Problem:
A hyphen is missing.

Explanation:
The promotion appeared in an FAQ for new lofts at the University of Houston.

Perhaps the promotion’s author should get my new hyphenation book!

The full sentence was (quote) “Included in your rent is the AT&T U-Verse 100 state-of-the art technology and it provides about 100 cable channels, including ABC, CBS, NBC, BET, CNN, CSPAN and many more. ” (unquote) — with a space between (quote) “state-of-the” (unquote) and (quote) “art” (unquote).

Because these two parts together modify the noun “technology”, the entire sequence of words — “state” plus “of” plus “the” plus “art” — should be hyphenated.

It makes no sense to talk about “art technology” that is (quote) “state-of-the” (unquote).

Solution:
“state-of-the-art technology”

I recently announced that I am finishing a new book about hyphenation.

I searched far and wide for a book like this one, to no avail, so I decided to write my own!

Actually, the book is almost done, but I am also working on some bonuses to accompany the book.

You see, I found that I had so much to say that I could not fit it all in one book, but I want you to have it all.

Here is an excerpt from the opening section of my upcoming book about hyphenation.

I hope that you enjoy it.

Typographically speaking, a hyphen is different than a dash, of which there are several:

• a figure dash (U+2012), which has the same width as a digit in typefaces with equal-width digits, commonly is used within telephone numbers (e.g., “555‒1212″), and is represented in HTML with the numeric form “‒”;
• an en dash (U+2013), which typically has the width of the letter “n”, commonly is used in ranges (e.g., “5–7 years”), and is represented in HTML with the numeric form “–” or as the entity “–”;
• an em dash (U+2014), which typically has the width of the letter “m”, commonly is used to identify a parenthetical thought, and is represented in HTML with the numeric form “—” or as the entity “—”;
• a quotation dash (U+2015), which is used for introducing quoted text, is used in some languages to print dialogue, and is represented in HTML with the numeric form “―”.

If you enjoyed this informative discussion about dashes, then you will enjoy my new book. Stay tuned!

Oh, and by the way: I highly recommend that you use, as appropriate, the above HTML codes in your own Web authoring. They will “class up” the text on your Web pages!

I saw this headline two mornings ago on CNN.

Problem:
A slash or more words are missing.

Explanation:
The headline appeared in a banner beneath the journalist during a news story on the Cable News Network television channel.

My immediate reaction: “Huh?”

Because so many Americans use the noun “economy” instead of “economical” as an adjective, my first impression was that the story was about economical suicides.

I said to myself, “Economical suicides? Huh?”

I then saw the word “LINK” and initially wondered to WHAT economical suicides were links.

I doubt that the headline writer was trying to be provocative by creating some sort of confusing headline.

Instead, I believe that the headline writer was trying to say in as few words as possible that there was a possible link between the U.S. economy and the suicide rate.

The problem with this “as few words as possible” approach is that it can often lead to confusing instead of concise headlines.

Assuming that the headline system at a TV network such as CNN automatically adjusts the font size to make the characters fit the width of the banner, there truly was not a good reason to write something as cryptic as (quote) “ECONOMY SUICIDE LINK” (unquote).

I would not use a hyphen between “ECONOMY” and “SUICIDE” because many people still would see that as some sort of reference to economical suicides.

The solution to this confusion comes, in my opinion, from a slash or a few more words.

The reason that I recommend a slash instead of a hyphen is:

• A slash connects two words but tells the reader to treat the two words as separate concepts, activities, or entities.
• A hyphen connects two words and tells the reader that the first word modifies the second word.

The news story was about the connection between separate activities — the U.S. economy and suicides — NOT about using “ECONOMY” to modify “SUICIDE”.

Solution:
“ECONOMY/SUICIDE LINK”
or
“LINK BETWEEN ECONOMY AND SUICIDE (RATES)”

Here is an example of a common mistake covered by the hyphenation book that I am finalizing.

A common hyphenation mistake is omitting the hyphen in the name of a fraction when the fraction is used as an adjective.

For example, (quote) “His one fourth investment returned more than he expected.” (unquote) — with no hyphen in “one fourth” — is a mistake.

The solution for this example is (quote) “His one-fourth investment returned more than he expected.” (unquote) — in which we have replaced the space between “one” and “fourth” with a hyphen.

The solution relates to the fact that one writes a fraction numerically as a single entity (e.g., “1/4″).

Including a hyphen lets one write a fraction’s name, too, as a single entity, and one must have a single entity to modify a noun.

If you remember that the name of a fraction has to be written — with a hyphen — as a single entity when acting as an adjective to modify a noun, just as the fraction is written numerically — with a slash (”/”) — as a single entity, then you will not make this common hyphenation mistake.

If you like this explanation, then you should like the remainder of the book.

Please keep checking this blog for the official announcement about the publication of the book.

Thanks!