Kirk Mahoney . com

I saw this last evening on television.

Problems:
1. A word is misspelled.
2. A hyphen is missing.

Explanation:
Fashion designer Tim Gunn has a program on the Bravo television channel called “Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style“.

I saw in the episode last evening on this program a list of what he calls his “10 Essential Elements”; one of the elements was listed as “Any Occassion Top” — with no hyphen and with a second “s” in the second word.

Spelling the noun “Occasion” with a second “s” is a common English blunder.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “occasion” — spelled correctly as O-C-C-A-S-I-O-N — 218,000,000 matches
• “occassion” — spelled incorrectly as O-C-C-A-S-S-I-O-N — 3,340,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have favored the correct spelling over the incorrect spelling by a ratio of 65.3-to-1, which is very good but not excellent, given the more than three million incorrect spellings.

Correctly spelling the noun “Occasion” fixes only the first problem. When an adjective plus a noun modify another noun, the adjective and first noun must be joined with a hyphen to form the modifier of the second noun.

So the adjective “Any” plus the first noun “Occasion” must be joined with a hyphen to form the modifier of the second noun “Top”.

Solution:
“Any-Occasion Top”

As I write this, the Dow-Jones Industrial Average has dropped from a record high one year ago to a five-year low.

Insanity is often defined as expecting your personal situation to improve while you continue to do what you always have done.

Protecting your working life from a worsening economy requires standing out — in a good way — from the crowd.

I believe that communicating better makes this possible.

Here are ten tips to keep working in a worsening economy, all with a focus on communicating better — doing something different, so that you’ll get different results.

Tip 1. Watch your spelling.

Here are some of the misspellings that I have documented in this blog:

• misspelling “extraordinary” as E-X-T-R-A-HYPHEN-O-R-D-I-N-A-R-Y
• misspelling “pronunciation” as P-R-O-N-O-U-N-C-I-A-T-I-O-N
• misspelling “likelihood” as L-I-K-E-L-Y-SPACE-H-O-O-D
• misspelling “accessible” as A-C-C-E-S-S-A-B-L-E
• misspelling “supersede” as S-U-P-E-R-C-E-D-E

You can throw off half your audience and embarrass yourself by misspelling a word in the title of one of your PowerPoint slides, in an important email message to your boss or customer, or on the front page of a white paper that you have written.

If you know that you are not a good speller, then take action, starting today, to change this.

Tip 2. Watch your punctuation.

Here are some of the punctuation problems that I have discussed in my blog:

• misusing apostrophes
• misusing commas
• misusing hyphens

You can improve your punctuation skills. Start today by buying a good book or two about punctuation.

Tip 3. Watch your words.

Picking the wrong word is another way to look bad in front of your fellow employees, your boss, or your customer or prospect.

Here are some pairs of words that give people trouble:

• affect vs. effect;
• bring vs. carry;
• come vs. go
• lie vs. lay;
• nauseous vs. nauseated.

Some might argue that many Americans do not know the difference in each of the above word pairs, so you should not worry about knowing the differences.

I disagree. Knowing the differences in these and other commonly confused word pairs can set you apart from the crowd with someone who cares — someone who can give you a raise, someone who can recommend you for a promotion, or someone who can give you new or more business.

Tip 4. Watch your grammar.

While text messaging and instant messaging have encouraged people to write in sentence fragments, not knowing how to write complete, grammatically correct sentences in other written forms — email messages, white papers, etc. — can hurt your reputation with the people who have the most influence over your finances.

Here are some common mistakes with grammar:

• putting a preposition where it does not belong, such as in “on today“;
• using “I” where “me” is required, as in “for my colleagues and I“;
• using the wrong form of a verb, as in “Can Hillary be beat?“

I could list many other types of mistakes with grammar, but you get the point.

If you have a basic discomfort with your grammar skills, then read some books about English grammar.

If you are generally confident about these skills but wonder on occasion whether something is correct, then research your question — here or elsewhere online. That nagging feeling is usually there for a good reason; pay attention to it!

Tip 5. Watch your slang.

Although slang can be fun to use, and although the origins of various slang expressions can be fascinating, using slang in your work life can hobble your career.

Here are some types of slang:

• regional slang, as in “y’all” or “you guys” in place of “you”;
• ethnic slang, as in “Where you at?” or “Git ‘er done.”;
• corporate slang, as in “open architecture” or “on the bubble”.

Now, you might know what all of the above examples mean, but this does not guarantee that your boss, your fellow employees, or your customers do, too.

A problem with regional slang is that people will use it against you by taking a “You are not from around here.” attitude.

A problem with ethnic slang is that people will use it against you by taking a “You are not one of us.” attitude.

And a problem with corporate slang is that it can seem intelligent when first read or heard but will later cause the reader or listener to wonder what you meant.

Tips 6-10.

I must postpone these for my next post.

Please think about these first five tips, take a break, and then return tomorrow for the remaining tips!

I saw this in a corporate message.

Problem:
The adjective is misspelled.

Explanation:
The correct spelling of the twice-used adjective in the sentence should have no hyphen.

I believe that the insertion of the hyphen reflects the writer’s discomfort with the presence of adjacent vowels that are parts of separate syllables.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following spellings (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “extraordinary” — spelled E-X-T-R-A-O-R-D-I-N-A-R-Y — 65,500,000 matches
• “extra-ordinary” — spelled E-X-T-R-A-HYPHEN-O-R-D-I-N-A-R-Y — 1,470,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have spelled this adjective correctly versus incorrectly by a ratio of 44.6-to-1, which is good but not great, especially given the nearly 1.5 million misspellings.

Solution:
“These extraordinary times called for extraordinary actions.”

I saw this recently on a voltage detector.

Problem:
The word “repress” in this imperative is incorrect.

Explanation:
The verb “repress” — spelled R-E-P-R-E-S-S — means to keep under control.

The verb “re-press” — spelled R-E-HYPHEN-P-R-E-S-S — means to press again.

The imperative sentence that appeared on the label of the hand-held device for detecting voltage was directing the reader to press the trigger again after releasing the trigger.

This tells us that the solution should contain a hyphen in the second verb and optionally the pronoun “it” as the object of the second verb.

Solution:
“Release trigger and re-press [it] while touching object.”

I saw this title at the start of a local TV news broadcast.

Problem:
The hyphen between “HIGH” and “DEFINITION” does not belong.

Explanation:
The title appeared at the start of the 5 p.m. news broadcast from Houston TV station KHOU.

The TV station was promoting that it broadcasts with a high-definition television signal.

However, just as “BRIGHT GREEN” would not take a hyphen in a phrase such as “DRESSES IN BRIGHT GREEN”, the title in the TV broadcast should have no hyphen.

The reason for this is that “HIGH DEFINITION” is not modifying anything. Instead, the adjective “HIGH” is simply modifying the noun “DEFINITION”.

Solution:
“11 NEWS IN HIGH DEFINITION”

I saw this on the Web in a banner advertisement for a nutritional product promoted by Lance Armstrong.

Problem:
The phrase contains a redundancy.

Explanation:
The banner ad is for a product named FRS, and Lance Armstrong’s portrait and Tour de France record appear in the banner.

The “x” in “7x” means “time”.

So “7x” means “7-time” — spelled 7-HYPHEN-T-I-M-E.

Therefore, either the “x” or the word “time” is redundant in “7x time Tour de France Winner”.

Solution:
“7x Tour de France Winner”
or
“7-time Tour de France Winner” (Notice the required hyphen between “7″ and “time”!)

I heard a caller say this on the radio during a gardening show this morning.

Problem:
The noun “foot” is incorrect in the caller’s statement.

Explanation:
The caller was describing the height of a tree to the gardening-show host.

The caller said, “It’s about 25 foot tall.”

It is correct to use the singular noun “foot” when hyphenating it with a number to form a compound modifier of another noun.

Here are some examples in which a number is hyphenated with a singular noun such as “foot” to form a compound modifier of the subsequent noun:

• 25-foot wave
• 24-inch level
• 5-mile run
• 3-layer fabric
• 100-foot hose

However, the word “tall” is not a noun except in a vernacular specifically related to describing clothing, so “It’s about 25-foot tall.”, in which we put a hyphen between “25″ and “foot”, is not the solution to the problem in the hyphen-free sentence “It’s about 25 foot tall.”

The only acceptable value for “X” in the hyphen-free sentence “It’s about X foot tall.” is a value of one or less, as in:

• “It’s about one foot tall.”
• “It’s about 0.7 foot tall.”
• “It’s about 0.1 foot tall.”

The reason for this is that the word “tall” in all of these sentences is an adjective that indicates the directional dimension to which the speaker is referring.

In other words, all of these sentences are answers to the question “How tall is it?”, and the word “tall” can be dropped from the preceding three sentences without harming the meaning:

• “It’s about one foot.”
• “It’s about 0.7 foot.”
• “It’s about 0.1 foot.”

Given that “It’s about 25 foot.” would be an incorrectly formed sentence because “25″ should be followed by a plural noun instead of a singular noun, we arrive at the solution to the problem.

Solution:
“It’s about 25 feet tall.”

I saw the phrase with the hyphen last night in an Acura advertisement on television.

Problem:
These two phrases have different meanings, but many people do not appreciate the difference.

Explanation:
The phrase “well qualified buyers” without the hyphen is equivalent to “well, qualified buyers” — with a comma and a space between the word “well” and the word “qualified”.

The word “well” in this hyphen-free phrase is an adjective, as in “He is a well man.”

In contrast, the word “well” is an adverb in the hyphenated modifier “well-qualified”.

In other words, “well” is modifying the word “qualified”, which on its own acts as an adjective, as in “qualified participants”.

One should typically NOT use a hyphen between an adverb and an adjective when together they form an adverb-adjective modifier of a noun.

However, when an adverb can also act as an adjective, and “well” is just such a word, one must put a hyphen between the adverb and the adjective to form the adverb-adjective modifier of a noun and thereby avoid possible confusion about whether the first word is an adverb or an adjective.

The word “more” is like the word “well” in that “more” can be either an adjective or an adverb.

• An example of “more” as an adjective can be found in “more attractive women” — with a space between “more” and “attractive”. A synonym for this example is “additional attractive women”.
• An example of “more” as an adverb can be found in “more-attractive women” — with a hyphen between “more” and “attractive”. A synonym for this example is “women who are more attractive”.

Solution:
The word “well” acts as an ADVERB in “well-qualified buyers” — with a hyphen between “well” and “qualified” — to form an adverb-adjective modifier of the noun “buyers”.

The word “well” acts as an ADJECTIVE in “well qualified buyers” — with a space between “well” and “qualified” — so that each of the words “well” and “qualified” individually modifies the noun “buyers”.

I saw this in a television commercial for Arm & Hammer “Essentials” cleaner.

Problems:
1. One of the words should be in past-participle form.
2. A hyphen is missing.

Explanation:
The advertising copywriter was promoting the environmentally friendly and non-harsh nature of the cleaner.

So the copywriter was trying to say that the cleaner was derived from or based on plants.

This gives us the solution to the first problem: The writer should have used the past participle “based” — spelled B-A-S-E-D — instead of the word “base” — spelled B-A-S-E.

Also, the copywriter was modifying the noun “cleaner” with two words in a compound fashion.

This gives us the solution to the second problem: The writer should have put a hyphen instead of a space after the word “plant”.

Both of these problems — not recognizing the need for a past participle nor the need for a hyphen — are, unfortunately, common English blunders.

Solution:
“Powerful plant-based cleaner”

I saw this [Call hyphen Jim] last week on a sign advertising the services of a personal trainer.

Problem:
The hyphen is unnecessary.

Explanation:
Sign makers are notorious for putting apostrophes where they do not belong.

It seems that some sign makers are extending this bizarre habit to hyphens, too.

There is absolutely no reason to put a hyphen between the imperative verb “Call” and the person to be called (Jim).

Solution:
“Call Jim at …”