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As you can see, the hyphen is a nasty, tricky, evil little mark that gets its kicks igniting arguments in newsrooms and trying to make everyone in the English-speaking world look like an idiot - it's the Bill Maher of punctuation.
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language
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June Casagrande |
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Grammar snobs are a distinct breed from their gentle cousins: word nerds and grammar geeks. The difference is bloodlust.
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June Casagrande |
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If you want to master the art of the sentence, you must first accept a somewhat unpleasant truth--something a lot of writers would rather deny: The Reader is king. You are his servant. You serve the Reader information. You serve the Reader entertainment. You serve the Reader details of your company's recent merger or details of your experiences in drug rehab. In each case, as a writer you're working for the man (or the woman). Only by knowi..
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June Casagrande |
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9975123
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Amateur grammar snobs are a lot like amateur gynecologists--they're everywhere, they're all to eager to offer their services, and they're anything but gentle.
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June Casagrande |
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d0bf10b
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Is that a dangler in your memo or are you just glad to see me?
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June Casagrande |
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This chapter is dedicated to those other delights of punctuation--exquisite little squiggles, those most delightful dots and dashes, and other tragically under-appreciated tiny tidbits! Nah. I'm just yankin' your chain.
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June Casagrande |
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b1a711a
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You must now--before God, Jon Stewart, and whoever's sleeping next to you (even if these entities are one and the same)--make a solemn oath.
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June Casagrande |
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9845a5f
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For Whom the Snob Trolls
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June Casagrande |
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a08be04
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I hope that, by this point, you're feeling a little less intimidated by the meanies, because I've got some bad news: Meanies come in many forms, not just human. They can be not only animal, but also mineral. In rare cases, they can even be vegetable, but we can talk about William F. Buckley some other time.
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June Casagrande |
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2505fdc
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Rumor had it that Professor Jerkwad had a history of holding classes in bars and using the school's senior class as harvesting grounds for a long string of wives who never seemed to stay married to him past age twenty-eight. Rumor also had it that a few years later he was canned from his job mid some rather unpleasant allegations, but we journalists can't succumb to rumor and conjecture when nonspecific innuendo is so much more titillating.
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June Casagrande |
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d6c2a39
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He needed to "kill his darlings"--Stephen King's favorite term for letting go of stuff that just doesn't work."
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June Casagrande |
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7633e9c
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If Readers have prejudices, that's the writing world we live in. We must decide how to navigate it. We can't please all the Readers all the time and we shouldn't try. but we don't get to create our Readers in our own image, either. We don't get to tell them what to value or enjoy. We can write in a way true to our own voice and our own ideas of beauty and substance, and we can hope that some readers appreciate it. But, even when we aim to s..
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June Casagrande |
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9b0e9fc
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Every long sentence can be broken up into shorter ones, and if you don't know how--if you don't see within your long sentences groupings of simple, clear ideas--it will show.
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June Casagrande |
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Feel free to use the following mnemonic device to help you remember: "To lay is to get laid and laid." (This is meant in the stuffiest grammatical sense and in no way implies the kind of smut a Santa Monica police officer might read into it.) "To lie," then, works as follows. "Today I lie on the beach." "Yesterday I lay on the beach." "At times, I have lain on the beach." None of those acts puts me in any danger of being arrested for lewd a..
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June Casagrande |
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0d0695a
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Amateur grammar snobs are a lot like amateur gynecologists--they're everywhere, they're all too eager to offer their services, and they're anything but gentle.
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June Casagrande |