Pro-Nouns and Anti-Semantic

Over at Slate today, the estimable Dana Stevens gave an almost begrudging thumbs-most-of-the-way-up to the new Mel Gibson movie, The Beaver. The film's release, you may recall, was delayed to provide some breathing room between us, the movie-going public, and the stink of Gibson's latest odious transgressions.

In any case, the movie is directed by Jodie Foster, who also performs in the film, and about whom Steven writes:

It's notoriously hard for an actor to direct his or herself on-screen, which may account for the lack of warmth in Foster's scenes with Gibson.

The problem here is that, while his and hers go together like Mel Gibson and raging misogynist anti-Semite, the reflexive pronouns are, of course, himself and herself. (True, hisself is a variant in some dialects, particularly those featured in movies where Jackie Gleason plays a sheriff, but not in Standard Written English.)

So how do we solve this? Some people--those with a sense of panache and derring-do--see an opportunity here to deploy a sexy suspended hyphen, like so: "him- or herself." But if that seems too risqué, we can also go with the stodgy but serviceable "himself or herself." Or, we can simply avoid the whole pickle by recasting the sentence: "It's notoriously hard for actors to direct themselves on-screen...especially when playing opposite a volatile misogynist anti-Semite."

The Dumb-Downed Theory of Hyphenation

According to the Hollywood Reporter (hey, I just happened to hit on it through a series of links; I don't have to explain myself to you) the word on the Beverly Hills street is that they're going to make a major motion picture adaption of Stephen King's post-apocalyptic epic, The Stand. I haven't read the novel, but I'm led to believe it is a post-apocalyptic epic worthy of major motion picture adaption. And apparently this isn't the first time the tale has been bound for the screen:

George Romero and Warners separately tried in vain to launch a movie adaptation in the 1980s, and a tone-downed version was produced as a six-hour miniseries by ABC in 1994. 

I'm sorry--a what version? Sure, you can make a case that a hyphenated compound should be treated as a single word for the purposes of past-tensifying--a "mutton-chopped" Civil War general, for instance--but "tone-downed" is an offense to the ear; it sounds like something a child who has been deprived of a Baby Einstein upbringing would say. "Toned-down version" would be the way to go. For that matter, I think you can even forgo the hyphen in this case and opt for the simple, austere "toned down version."

Give Me a Brake

I know a guy. Or, more accurately, I know that if I ever need something done on the cheap and nasty--auto repair, paint job, body dismembering--I know that my brother will know a guy. So when the brakes on the privately-owned automobile began making plaintive, teeth-rattling grinding noises, I put in a call to Mark. Surely any brake-and-wheel franchisee would do the job for a decent price, no?

Biggest rip-off in the car repair business, he says, and he puts me in touch with a retired mechanic who sells all makes of brake pads on Craigslist. Within hours, Bill* is at our door with a set of "premium" pads at a fraction of retail cost:

I don't want my brake rotors getting cancer, so of course I insist on brake pads that are free of asbestos. The thing is, I prefer that these pads be described as asbestos-free. Perhaps I'm being a hyper-hyphenator, but I don't think there should be much argument when it comes to compound modifiers (see "high-efficiency" on the same package): a hyphen is what makes a compound one in its adjectiveness. Some will argue that it depends where the compound is deployed ("a well-read scholar" vs. "a scholar who is well read," to borrow an example from Bill Walsh), but many more will argue that any time you're using a compound ending in free (sugar-free, tax-free) the final component is more suffix than word and always requires a hyphen.

But to get back to the pads. What does a fellow like me, who spent the better part of an evening trying to get the hood open on his vehicle to find out how big the engine is (for some reason, Bill needed to know) do with a set of non-cancer-causing brake pads? Luckily, Mark knows a guy who runs a shop in my neighborhood-- a swarthy man of indeterminate ethnicity and loose ethics--who was willing to install said pads for a reasonable forty bucks, provided I crossed his greasy palm with cash and didn't ask for any verifying paperwork. Which made the whole transaction satisfyingly tax-free (with a hyphen) for both of us.

Shady? Yes, I suppose. But if I get busted on it, I'm confident I can get sharp, aggressive legal representation at a good price. Mark knows a guy.

* Not his real name. His real name is John.

The Case of the 400-Dollar Hyphen

I don't want to keep picking on the notices Abby brings home from school, but take a look at this:

First of all, the header. There is more than one community school in District #43, so by rights that should be Community Schools'. Or should it? Maybe that's supposed to be an apostrophe-less plural and not a possessive at all. It's hard to tell, because the opening sentence begins with "Our Community School's are pleased to offer...", a clear case of an apostrophe poking its way into a plural, so forgive me for being non-plussed.

But the bigger issue is the misplaced hyphen. A niggling detail, you say? Not at all. These summer day camps are being offered at 80 bucks a pop, so at first glance it seems like quite the deal for six weeks of kid-storage.  Alas, as the ensuing details make clear, these are not SIX-WEEK LONG camps. They are, rather, SIX WEEK-LONG camps, at 80 dollars per.

I could probably be persuaded to spill 80 beans for a summer-long program, but for five days of producing papier mache puppets and finger paintings? I'd rather spend the money doubling down on the Merlot and just muddle through the week. Anyway, the point is, that is one misleading hyphen.

Babysitter Gets Suspended Sentence

Last week, Abby brought home from school a flyer pitching after-school classes. The description of one of the courses, for Babysitter's Training, was maggoty with errors, including this concluding advisory:

Bring a nut and candy free lunch

Without the help of some hyphens, this sentence is open to misinterpretation. Should I bring a single nut, along with a lunch that is free of candy? A free lunch consisting of nuts and candy? Neither, actually, because, as a middle-aged dad who is most emphatically not a babysitter, I won't be attending at all.

In any case, the construction to be used here is
"a nut- and candy-free lunch."* That's right--with this baby, you get not just the gratifying clarity of employing hyphens, but also the spine-tingling frisson of satisfaction that comes from firing off a suspended hyphen, which, as we all know, is the most exciting hyphen of all.

Earlier in the description, there is another missing hyphen, when we are advised that participants receive a "personalized wallet size completion card," but I'm inclined to let that one go simply because I was amused by the image of a 12-year-old pig-tailed kid flipping open her Hello Kitty wallet with a dramatic flourish to flash her official Babysitter's Training credentials.

*Note the space after the first hyphen and the absence of a hyphen following and.

Keep Your Hands Where We Can See Them

Um...that should be semen-related.

And Let's Not Forget the Pipe-Smoking...

I guess it was bound to happen. The body image police are coming down on Santa Claus. I see from a summary of a news story on The Daily Beast that someone calling himself a public health expert is blaming Kris Kringle for making kids fat.

"Santa promotes a message that obesity is synonymous with cheerfulness and joviality," the gormless scold, whose rantings were published in a British medical journal, is quoted as saying. The blurb goes on to say:

"Old St. Nick also encourages the spread of swine flu by getting little ones to sit on his lap, and he teaches reckless behavior with his "extreme sports such as roof surfing and chimney jumping."

Well. The fat man may be guilty of bad role-modeling, but I say the author of that passage stands accused of faulty noun-creation for not inserting hyphens into those newly-created sports of "roof-surfing" and "chimney-jumping."

Today was a bad day for Mr. Claus. This article from the Baltimore Sun makes a compelling case that perpetuating the Santa myth in young minds is immoral. As a card-carrying rationalist, I almost felt guilty for perpetrating this thought crime on my daughter. As the father of an obstreperous six-year-old, though, I've decided I'll continue to make shameless use of the "all-seeing Santa" story as a powerful behavior modification tool. I'll trade my intellectual principles for a restful evening any day.

Call Me When You Invent Never-Wash Underwear

My mailbox has been maggoty with promotional flyers lately, a sign that we are well into shopping orgy season. Normally, I give these junk mail come-ons a cursory thumb-through, half-heartedly hoping to spot an enticingly lascivious brassiere ad, but today I was brought up short by this front page offer from Mark's Work Wearhouse, that bastion of working man's fashion:

$10.00 OFF ALL MEN'S NEVER IRON DRESS SHIRTS

Surely the words "never iron" are meant to work together as a single modifier for "dress shirts," which means they're crying out for a hyphen to join them in holy adjective-ness. Otherwise, "all men's never iron dress shirts" can be read as a foreign speaker's chauvinistic declaration, along the lines of, "All women's never know how parallel park."

Personally, I regard all my shirts as "never-iron." The trick is to throw the shirt in the dryer for a few minutes just before dressing for your business meeting, then smoothing it out with a damp hand as you head out the door with bagel in mouth and coffee in hand. If you're interested, I also have tips on how to hem pants in minutes with staples and duct tape.

What if We Promise to Use Only French Hyphens?

This may come as a surprise to those living in truly free democracies, but in some places in Canada it is actually illegal to display signs in English. I know the jackbooted language gestapo have been on the prowl in Quebec for decades, looking for a shopkeeper displaying an "open" sign whom they can threaten with fines, imprisonment, and the withholding of croissants. But I was dismayed to learn from this article that similar crimes against linguistic liberty are in danger of occurring in New Brunswick as well. The author makes an impassioned plea for freedom of multilingual speech, in a piece that includes this line:

...what's at stake here, with this proposed language legislation, is the right of each and every person in the community to choose for him or herself what goes on the sign outside their business.

A wonderful sentiment, but what a missed opportunity. How often, after all, does one get to pull a suspended hyphen out of one's bag of punctuation tricks? A suspended hyphen holds your place while you wait to fill in the suffix on the end of a complementary term. Like so: "him- or herself."  Pretty cool, isn't it? So rarely needed, but when deftly applied...well, let's just say I felt damn sexy just writing that.

Neither Rain, Nor Sleet, Nor Misused Hyphen...

This paragraph is from an Atlantic.com piece about the possibility of the US Postal Service eliminating Saturday mail delivery:

The biggest problem I could see would be for those who pay their bills via USPS. An extra day for payments in-transit could translate to more late fees. Of course, this problem should take care of itself before too long -- once people realize that Saturday service has ended, and they need to mail their checks a day earlier. It's consumers' responsibility to understand how to get their bills in on-time, even if the mail service changes its policies. Besides, with each day that passes more and more Americans are choosing online or phone-based payment options, rather than rely on the mail.

 Now, I've been accused of littering my prose with an excess of em dashes--most of that criticism coming from gormless cretins who fail to see the muscular vigor with which the dash propels a reader forward--but even I confess that a humble comma would have served better here. The dash really isn't setting anything off that needs to be set off in so emphatic a fashion. At least that's what I would argue. Less arguable, however, is the use of on-time. You can talk about "on-time" delivery in a hyphenated, adjectival way but bills that come in on time do so without a hyphen. It's kind of like the everyday/every day mix-up that we see so often.

Now to the greater question. Mail delivery on Saturdays? Really? As a Canadian who hasn't see a postal carrier darken my doorway on the weekend since the heyday of wood-paneled station wagons and aerosol cheese spreads, I was astonished to find out that this was happening. The are many things we Northerners can learn from the Yanks (making booze available for sale in every corner market and gas station would be a start, if you ask me) but spending $3.5 billion a year on weekend mail distibution just seems quaintly extravagant in these austere times.

Remembrance of Cupcakes Past

This postcard comes from yesterday's update of the deliciously voyeuristic postsecret.com. It’s great, I think, that people have a place like this to reveal their innermost thoughts so snarky people like me can pass instant judgment on them. “Drama queen.” “Jerk.” “Pathetic narcissist.” I mutter my snap assessments under my breath as I scroll through the week’s offerings.

 Every once in a while, though, I come across one like this that I find genuinely affecting, and I have no choice but to holster the snark gun. Sure, it’s kind of pathetic that he or she couldn’t recognize his or her name at the age of five. Still, the secret is nostalgic and sweet in the best senses of those words.

So what’s the infraction? “Twenty nine” should be hyphenated. A misdemeanor offense, and I’m feeling charitable so I’m going to recommend a suspended sentence.