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 …”
If you are a frequent reader of my blog, then you probably noticed a new button in the sidebar today.
I have added a “Listen to this site with Jott Feeds” button beneath the “Subscribe to Full Feed!” RSS link.
As you should know, you can add my text feed through the “Subscribe to Full Feed!” link. This lets you, for example, make any of my recent posts appear as a link at the top of your Gmail inbox.
In contrast, the “Listen to this site with Jott Feeds” button lets you use Jott to listen to my blog posts over your telephone instead of reading my blog posts in a browser.
In fact, among its many features, Jott lets you listen to any of your favorite RSS feeds by telephone, not just the posts from Kirk Mahoney dot com.
Once you have a Jott account and have added my Jott feed to your Jott account, you can call 1-866-JOTT-123 (1-866-568-8123) from your telephone and say “Jott Feeds” and then “Kirk Mahoney dot com” to hear my blog posts in reverse chronological order — in other words, to hear my latest post first.
Now that I have the “Listen to this site with Jott Feeds” button on my website, I will be writing posts for listeners as well as for readers. Please bear with me while I master how to nudge the Jott text-to-speech system into saying exactly what I want listeners to hear and understand.
Please let me know your opinion of using Jott to listen to my blog posts by going to my Contact page, selecting Feedback, entering your comments, and submitting your message.
I highly recommend Jott and my Jott feed for helping you to communicate better.
I have been wondering about these two nouns for awhile.
Problem:
One of these nouns is less appropriate in more formal situations.
Explanation:
According to Dictionary.com, the noun “quote” has been accepted — at least informally — as a truncation of the noun “quotation” for more than a century.
However, most consider “quote” to be less formal than “quotation” and not appropriate in all situations.
For example, while many consider “quotes from the Three Stooges” to be acceptable, fewer consider “quotes from the Bible” to be acceptable.
I doubt that the phrase “price quote” will disappear from American English.
It’s valuable, though, to know that “quote” is a truncation of “quotation” and therefore is less formal.
Although using “quote” as a truncation of “quotation” does not lead to ambiguity (in contrast to “install” — a truncation of either “installer” or “installation”), I believe that this use is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It’s simpler to say the one-syllable word than it is to say the three-syllable word.
Solution:
Use “quote” in informal situations; use “quotation” otherwise.