Back in February (yes, I’m late), Peter asked:

I would like to know when you are allowed to use the hyphen (”-”). I tend to use it pretty often - like now - and I’m wondering if it is proper use. I also get confused when two words are joined up through a hyphen. In my primary language - which is dutch - we tend to stick words together. With english, I’m not always sure when you are supposed to place a hyphen, leave a gap, or join the words togethers. Like for instance: all together, altogether, all-together. Well placed, well-placed, wellplaced?

First, there is a difference between a dash and a hyphen. We’ve discussed dashes before–they are used to indicate a break or pause in thought, much like a comma does. Where Peter says “- like now-” he should rightfully use two dashes together (–).

A Hyphen, on the other hand, has two functions.

• One is for pulling words together. (”Well-placed”)
• One is for separating them into syl-la-bles.

Since Peter’s questions is mostly about the first one, we’re going to focus on that.
I’ve touched on the first one, back when I told you about compound-adjectives, but the “compound” part is not restricted solely to adjectives. Generally speaking, when you’re putting two or more words together because they are acting as a team, you need to tie them together with hyphens. (“Blue-green yarn.” “The next-to-the-last chair in the row.” “The well-placed decoration is just the right touch.”)

If they are working individually, however, you keep them separate. (”I like the blue, green, and yellow yarns.” “I’m sitting next to the door.” “I must say, that chair is so well placed, it never falls over.”)

Also, if they get tied together long enough, they eventually become one word. (Handspun yarn. Lightbulb.) So in Peter’s question about “all together,” you can use “all together” to describe the action of a group, but you would not use “all-together” at any time I can immediately think of. “Altogether,” of course, can describe (ahem) a person without clothes, as in “The king was in the altogether, as naked as the day that he was born.” If you’re not sure whether a pairing has passed into the not-needing-hyphen stage yet, it doesn’t hurt anything to use it.

Thanks for the question, Peter. Hope this helps. Anybody else have questions?

There’s an AT&T Wireless commercial, showing a father knocking on steamy car windows at a make-out spot, looking for his daughter because he hadn’t gotten her text message about spending a night at a friend’s house. The voice-over has him saying something to the effect that, “Come Monday, you’ll be known as the girl with the annoying father that nobody wants to date.”

Well, this annoys me every time I see it. Because, of course, why would anyone want to date the poor girl’s father?

This is a classic example of a dangling modifier, which is exactly what happens when you attach a modifier to the wrong word. Clearly, in that commercial, it’s the girl that nobody will want to date, not her father. All the writers needed to do was say, “…Known as the girl that nobody wants to date with the annoying father.”

Some more examples?

• Tossing the frisbee in the air, the dog ran to catch it.
• While talking on the phone, the doorbell rang.
• Running across the floor, the rug slipped and I fell.
• He was staring at the girl by the door wearing tight jeans.

What do you think about using slang in your writing?

The official Rule is that you should avoid colloquialisms when you write. I can give you two good reasons for this.

1. They date your writing, just like any other popular reference. You can refer to some popular television show or catch-phrase, and all is well and good … for now. But a few years down the road? Not so much. Remember the Terminator’s “I’ll be back”? Or Bart Simpson’s “Ay, Carumba!”? Fonzie’s “Aaaaay”? Exactly. You remember them (or not), but if you used them in an article when they were popular, well, it won’t have aged very well.

2. They are unprofessional. Or rather, they make you sound unprofessional. Too many slang terms may make your readers think that you don’t know how to express yourself “correctly.” Colloquialisms by their very nature are casual.

That said, as with many (many) writing rules, this one relies on the context. So, when can you use slang?

1. When writing dialogue. No matter how correctly they speak, practically nobody completely avoids slang when having a conversation. You just expect less of it in a speech by a head of state than, say, a farmer from some isolated area. So, when writing dialogue, if your character would use more colorful language? Use it.

2. In casual writing. When writing a letter to a friend, you can and should write as naturally as you can. Because, again, unless you are a head of state, English professor, or someone in some other highly-literate line of work, chances are that you don’t speak like a textbook reads. Which means that, if you’re writing naturally, your writing isn’t going to be perfect. That might not be ideal when writing something official, but in an e-mail or a friendly note? By all means, go to town.

You’ve seen them. The little smiley faces made out of a colon and a close-parentheses.

The wink, the frown, the sticking-out-of-the tongue:

You know the ones. They’re so ubiquitous that many computer programs automatically transform them to pictures of little faces rather than use the keyboard representation. They’re everywhere.

I wouldn’t dream of telling you NOT to use them (as much as a part of me would like to), but what I will tell you is to use them sparingly. Just like exclamation points, just like too-familiar adjectives, the usage of the emoticons is too common.

What that translates to, for a writer, is laziness. It’s so easy to make a snide comment and then follow it up with a little happy face to show that you didn’t really mean it. Or to make sure the reader knows you’re telling a joke. Or just that you’re having a miserable day. The thing is, for a writer, that’s what the words are supposed to do. Emoticons just take that old saw, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” and expand on it ad infinitum.

But, do you really want to be known for your laziness? Sure, emoticons are handy little things to toss into an e-mail to a friend. But when they come en masse, they become obnoxious. One bee buzzing around your picnic is atmosphere, but a swarm can get, er, difficult. Similarly, an e-mail with one little smiley face is cute. One that has one after every other sentence? Gag (as they said in my high school days).

All this should not be surprising since you already know how I feel about abbreviations, and emoticons are the worst kind of abbreviations, because they’re not even words, they’re pictograms. (And, oh, there’s a post for another day!) If you’ve been paying attention, you will have noticed that I never, ever use emoticons. If anything, I’ll type “(grin)” where that little would go because, yes, I’d rather type the extra five keystrokes than use an emoticon. I had a brief fling with them when I first learned of them in college, back in the late 1980s, but quickly decided they were too “cutesy” for my taste. Too casual, even for casual e-mails. Too annoying, because, of course, everybody picked them up when they first made their appearance. But, hey, I never yearned for a Cabbage Patch doll, either.

But maybe that’s just me.

Is it? How do you feel about emoticons? Are they cute? Fun? Functional? Annoying? Omnipresent? Useful? 

(And–interesting. Wordpress DID “translate” those typed emoticons to little smiley faces. Sigh. Even when you want to use the things, the computer-world works against you!)

One of the most basic tips for good writing: Don’t over-use the same word and don’t use hackneyed phrases that have been used so much they become cliche.

I notice this the most in my “casual” writing, things like e-mails to friends, comments on blogs, and the like. One of these nights I really need to pull out my thesaurus and remind myself of some other, better, lesser-used superlatives like “striking,” “keen,” “awesome,” “meritorious” or “smashing.” You know, to be able to write something a little snazzier than “It’s so pretty!” when I see a beautiful hand-knit by a friend.

The problem is that words like “pretty” and “nice” have been so overused that any strength they originally had has been diluted, leaving them insipid, weak shadows of their former selves . . . but, isn’t that a sad thing to think about any word? Can’t you just picture them, sitting in their recliners, their canes and walkers nearby, reminiscing about the days when they were the words to use? The strong, active, cut-to-the-chase words that everyone wanted to voice?

“I wasn’t always just ‘Nice,’ you know, I used to mean all sorts of things! Wanton. Coy. Punctilious. Well-bred. Now I’m just a worn-out old catch-phrase.”

When, no doubt, the word “Gay” says, “You think you’ve got problems? I used to mean happy and merry, and now I’m a political land-mine. Woo hoo. Hurray for me. I remember when I was just a nice word . . . oh, sorry, buddy,” as the word “Nice” winces, “I didn’t mean you.”

All while “Like” is sitting in the corner, twitching . . .

(Inspired by an old post on my knitting blog.)

This one is very simple, short and to the point.

Exclamation points (aka Exclamation marks).

Don’t use them any more than you have to.

Period.

And if you DO have to use them?

Only use one. Never multiples.

Too many exclamation points make you sound like an overly-excited teenager, jabbering on the telephone to her BFF. (Like, OMG!) Now, obviously, there are times when you need to use them. Nobody calmly says, “Stop,” to a toddler running toward a busy road. If there’s a fire, you shout, “Fire!” I mean, the punctuation exists for a reason.

The problem is that, as writing gets more casual and more conversational . . . as we write more quick, little e-mails to friends, or comments on blogs . . . it’s easy to overuse the Exclamation Point. Sometimes it’s warranted, of course. If your favorite blogger just got a book deal, you tell them, “Congratulations!” “Happy birthday” just doesn’t sound the same without the “!” at the end. For that matter, when you see your best friend for the first time in ages, you’re going to be speaking in exclamations (”It’s so great to see you! You look fantastic! I love your haircut!” Your kids are getting so big!”)

The point is that you don’t want all of your daily correspondence to have that breathless, OMG! kind of feeling. Or, well, maybe you do. If you, you know, want to sound like a giggling teenager.

Out of so many grammatical stumbling points, I can’t choose one on which to focus today . . .

So, let me ask you. Do you have any specific questions you’d like to see addressed? Topics I have not covered yet? Tips you’d like to you share?

Honestly, I’m at a loss. Not because there aren’t enough points to cover–surely there are–but how can I choose?

Let’s just do a quick run-down on how you use quotation marks, shall we? (American-style, that is–I know some of these rules are different with British usage, but can only speak for American-English.)

• Simply put–and it should be redundant–quotation marks are used for quotations. If you are quoting some of my many words of wisdom, you should put them in quotes. “Quotation marks are used for quotations.”
  If you are paraphrasing–not quoting me directly–you do not need the quotes.

• Block quotes (those idented paragraphs usually used for quotations of four lines or more) do not require quotation marks.

• The first word in a quotation should be capitalized. “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.“

• If you are writing dialogue and interrupting your quote, you do not need to capitalize the second half of the sentence. “Golly gee,” he said breathlessly, “that’s just swell, Mary Jo!“

• As a general rule (there are always exceptions), if your quotation is a full sentence, all punctuation should be inside the quote marks. “She sells seashells by the seashore.” This particularly applies to periods and commas.
• Punctation such as exclamation points, Question marks, dashes–these go inside or outside the quotes depending on whether the quote or the sentence “using” the quote is the exclamation or question.
  For example: Then I shouted, “You’re burning the toast!” has the exclamation point inside the quotes because it was the quoted shout that had the exclamation.
  Whereas Turn up the radio! They’re playing “Stupid Cupid”! has the exclamation point outside the quotes because it’s not the song title that has the “!” but the actual sentence that is being exclaimed.

• If your quote is only part of your sentence, the punctuation belongs outside. As in: Don’t ever forget the maxim, “Loose Lips Sink Ships”.

• When you have a quote inside of a quote, you should use single quotes: “Then he said to me, ‘Mary Jo, that’s just swell,’ can you imagine?”

This, of course, is not meant to be a complete list of all possible uses of quotation marks. In fact, I know that it’s incomplete. What did I not tell you that you’d like to know about? Is there anything I said that wasn’t clear? Let me know!

And, looking forward, are there any particular topics for Mangled Monday that you’d like to see covered? For some reason, I have trouble coming up with the ideas from week to week . . . probably because there are so MANY things to cover!

Short but sweet today.

My sister (glaring at me because I dare to like Strunk & White, which she and my niece are studying) asked me today what I thought about whether the preposition “up” should be used when writing a sentence such as:

• You brighten up my day

Or

• You brighten my day.

I was in the middle of stirring a bit pot of goulash at the time and so didn’t give it a lot of thought, but said that I believed either one was correct, because it was describing the “direction” of the brightening, but wasn’t altogether necessary either way. But after dinner was over and I had some time, I started thinking. I can find plenty of guides to the usage of prepositions. Here, for example. And here. Also here. And yet, this example she gave me is an entirely different case.

Because, in this sample sentence, the word “up” is not a preposition at all. It’s modifying the verb, “brighten.” In other words, it’s an adverb. Prepositions can be just as duplicitous as any other type of word in the English language and serve more than one purpose. The question is whether they’re actually part of a prepositional phrase. If there is an object (”in the house,” “from the left“) they are acting as prepositions. If there is not, they are not.

Here’s a handy little quiz for you, to help clarify it.

Do you remember, from grade school English, how to properly annotate a title?

Titles of books, newspapers, magazines, movies, poems, journals, TV shows, works of art, musical compositions, ships, and airplanes should all be underlined. Or, italicized. They are more or less interchangeable so far as typing goes.

This is because handwriting, of course (does anybody write anything by hand anymore?) doesn’t really allow itself to the option of using italics, so when writing things by hand, underlining is the only real choice. It is also recommended for manuscripts–it makes it clear to see. So, for all intents and purposes, they are the same thing.

Now, quotation marks should be used for titles of articles, essays, short poems, songs, book chapters, and specifics episodes of tv shows.

So, really, it’s easy to remember. The big things get underlines/italics. The smaller pieces get quotation marks. So when you rave about this to all your friends, you’ll want to say, “I read this wonderful post called “MM: Titles” on the Punctuality Rules! blog.”