That work, which I did first thing yesterday morning, may be akin to a soldier checking, oiling and testing his weapon. I felt a granite sureness in pulling out Webster's Unabridged, The Chicago Manual of Style, Follett, Fowler, Strunk and White and the AP Stylebook. Weapons and ammo. Check. Ready to go to battle.
I mentioned this in a Tweet and got an interesting response from an old colleague, an award-winning wordsmith in his publishing days.
Strunk and White? Are you kidding? The days of having 30 minute arguments of serial commas and whether one means anticipation or simple expectation are days of yore, old friend.I understand where he's coming from, in an era of 140-word Tweets and IM slang that's, OMG, 2die4.But sunshine peeks through the clouds. His response coincided with a request from a colleague at Blanc & Otus. A client wanted to resolve an internal discussion about how to handle compound modifiers. He was wondering whether their copy was too hyphen-happy.
There, in the pages of those great language books, was the guidance we so often have trouble finding these days: Use the hyphen to avoid confusion. "Small-business owners" means something different than "small business owners."
So people still care. Are these people graying around the temples, raised at a time when we read books not screens, tapped typewriters not keyboards? Perhaps. But at the agency I got urgent questions from twenty-somethings (note the hyphen) about serial commas, about punctuation, about style. It matters.
People, like nature, abhor a vacuum.While the language evolves as it should, business communications, done well, will always adhere to rules.
5 comments:
I am not a twenty-something, and I still think you use too many hyphens when you help me write press releases. I always take them out, especially when you write "social-media" instead of "social media." ;-) But yes, I care enough to ask. And give you a hard time about it.
The question is: will txt'ers come to appreciate clarity in writing after being misunderstood a few too many times, or will they never care that their communications problems derive from their own lack of communications skills? Or worse, never notice that they have communications problems?
"Too many hyphens"? Do the hyphens cause...a problem or something? I remember when an editor once told me she worried about too many commas. I told her to stop writing so many pauses into her features.
Small-business owner is different than small business owner. The argument that 'people will know what it means' is specious.
And don't get me started on the difference between "antique store" and "antiques store". :-)
The wonderful thing is that each of you gives a huge shit about language. We can argue about hyphens (and you know who'd win ; )) but the point is that you care about them, one way or the other.
That we care, matters.
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