I know it's been awhile since my last blog post (I'm not very good at keeping up with this sort of thing) but I thought I'd share this piece by Anthony Ambrogio, published in the July issue of The Horror Writer's Association Member Newsletter.

The Grumpy Grammarian: Another Bunch of Omitted Hyphens I’ll Never Get Back
Anthony Ambrogio

We use certain words and phrases so often that we sometimes don’t stop to think about what we’re really saying when we do.

How many times have you heard—or have you said, after watching a lousy movie, spending time with a boring person, reading this column—“Well, that’s another x hours/xx minutes of my life that I’ll never get back”?

It’s an amusingly contemptuous way of expressing your displeasure at the time you wasted, I’ll grant you that—but it’s actually a pretty nonsensical phrase if you stop to think about it because, no matter what you do—undergo major surgery, wait for a person who never shows up, see your favorite group live in concert, have the greatest sex ever—it’s all time of your life that you’ll never get back. That’s the nature of time. And life.

A more logical, and perhaps more damning, expression that can indicate your dissatisfaction with how you have spent/are spending your time would be something like, “I could be [fill in the blank] right now.” In other words, instead of doing what you’re doing, you could be engaged in another activity that you would prefer (no matter how awful that activity might be) to whatever you’re stuck with at the moment. For example, “I could be having root canal right now.”

Just something to think about sometimes.

And then there are hyphens. Something I want you always to think about.

I may have already mentioned to you that the Boston Globe, one of the daily papers I’m getting now, never uses hyphens. It’s as if the editorial board got together and declared, “The bean counters say we use 0.0001 milliliter of ink every time we print a hyphen. That’s, like, 0.01 milliliters per copy. That’s, like, 4 liters per 400,000-copy run. In a year, that adds up to something like 1460 liters of ink (or a little more than 385 gallons for those of you who don’t do metrics). Think of the money we’ll save if we dispense with the pesky little punctuation mark. —And, besides, everyone knows what we mean when we leave those hyphens out, anyway.”

Right. Why hyphenate “health care law” or “high school student”? Everyone knows what we mean, right?

On June 15, 2015, the Globe had a front-page headline, “Firms struggle with sick time rules.” I read that and wondered what was so sick about rules about time that would cause a firm to struggle with them. No—I really did. It took me a minute to realize that what the Globe article was actually about was sick-time rules, rules governing sick time. A hyphen would have saved me the confusion. (But, hey, this was a hyphen they didn’t use that was in a headline—it probably saved them 0.0005 milliliters of ink!)

The other day, the Globe wrote about a “gay rights group,” and I had to say to myself, “Hmm, I’ve heard of gay-rights groups—groups of people who lobby/fight for gay rights, but I never knew that there were some rights groups that were composed of gay people only.” Apparently, there must be because the Boston Globe put it right there in unhyphenated black and white.

Speaking of black and white, at my latest writers-group meeting, I had a suggestion for one member who had referred, in a book chapter, to movies that were not in color. I told her that “black-and-white movies” needed to be hyphenated. And another member argued that I was over-correcting, that everyone knew what was meant when a person wrote “black and white movies.”

Oh, yeah? Well, I know that, back in the 1930s and 1940s, when “colored pictures” (and I don’t mean Technicolored pictures) were being made for segregated audiences, particularly in the South, some African-American performers (like Nina Mae McKinney) appeared in both those black pictures and in predominantly “white” pictures made in Hollywood. So, you see, “black and white movies” can have a different meaning from “black-and-white movies”—the former refers to the viewers for which those movies were made (and the performers who appeared in them); the latter refers to the monochromatic nature of certain movies.

But this didn’t convince my writer-group friend.

I wondered why she was being so recalcitrant, especially since I knew that—as a Professor of English at University of Detroit Mercy—she would never stand for the misuse/omission of other forms of punctuation. (Around here, on the streets of Cape Cod, I’ve come across signs announcing “Captain So-and-sos Lane,” no apostrophe, and “Jacks Shack,” also no apostrophe. She would certainly object to such errors.)

I got frustrated and said, “Why not just do away with any and all punctuation?” This is what makes me a grumpy grammarian.

I’m surprised the Globe hasn’t said, “What do we need the apostrophe for? Everyone knows what we mean.” Think how much more ink the paper could save if it left out the possessive punctuation! Hell, if they want to save ink—and paper—why not just run all the words together and let the reader figure out what’s what; after all, everyone would know what the writer meant. Wouldn’t they?

I know I’ve told you before (and I’m sure I’ll tell you again), but—yeah, sure—often readers do know what you mean—but not always. And what happens when they misunderstand something crucial that you’re trying to relate?

When you speak, your emphasis tells a listener what a hyphen tells a reader (i.e., whether it’s a gay rights group or a gay-rights group), but, when you write, you can’t rely on tone of voice, facial expressions, or hand gestures to get your point across. You have to let the words and punctuation do the work for you. So let ’em!

Thank you, and good day.

Anthony Ambrogio

Copyright (C) 2015. Used by permission.