April 21, 2025

Confusing hyphenation situations

Most of the time, hyphens connect two words that work together to describe a noun, as in “heat-seeking missile.” The hyphen makes clear it’s not a heat missile. It’s not a seeking missile. Neither of those words can describe missile on its own. They have to work together, to connect, to tell you about the missile.

These are called compound modifiers: words that team up to work like a modifier, usually an adjective, to describe another word. These modifiers are central to hyphenation rules, which say, basically: Hyphenate a compound modifier when doing so can prevent ambiguity. That is, don’t let your reader confuse “buffalo-riding birds” with “buffalo riding birds.”

Compound modifiers can be adverbs, too. Often, these compound adverbs come after the verb: She works part-time. And because adverbs can modify adjectives, as in “fabulously wealthy,” compound adverbs do the same: “jaw-droppingly wealthy.”

Nouns like “mock-up,” and verbs like “mass-produce” can also be hyphenated. But a lot of those are in the dictionary, meaning you don’t have to figure out on your own how to write them. Then there are prefixes and suffixes, whose hyphenation rules are a mess, widely disagreed upon and inconsistent, requiring a hyphen in “re-create” but none in “reenact.”

“Use of the hyphen is far from standardized,” the Associated Press Stylebook writes. “It can be a matter of taste, judgment and style sense. Think of hyphens as an aid to readers’ comprehension. If a hyphen makes the meaning clearer, use it. If it just adds clutter and distraction to the sentence, don’t use it.”

AP’s explanations, exceptions, special circumstances and examples go on for about 900 words, making hyphens one of the longest entries in the style guide. I had referred back to these 900ish words countless times in the years leading up to that fateful day I learned about that dry old meat. Yet I was stopped in my tracks. Was it 30-day-dry-aged beef or 30-day dry-aged beef? That is, were all those words working as a single adjective to modify “beef”?

 “At times, a writer must decide whether words preceding a noun form a single adjective that should be hyphenated as one modifier or whether some terms within are functioning independently,” I wrote in my 2010 book “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” “For example, in choosing between ‘a discriminating-but-value-conscious shopper’ and ‘a discriminating but value-conscious shopper,’ the writer can decide based on whichever best captures the intended meaning.” Then I shared the results of a survey I gave to some professional copy editors, who all agreed that value-conscious should be hyphenated but the rest should not. Yet when I asked them about “30-day-dry-aged,” they disagreed. Two thirds said to hyphenate the whole shebang as a single compound. The remainder said it’s “30-day dry-aged.”
 

There’s no wrong answer, but I’m with the majority on this one. It’s not 30-day beef that is dry-aged. All four words in that compound build on each other to create a single meaning.

Most often, these “compounds of uncertain scope” appear in phrases like “extreme-heat-related illness.” This came up recently in my copy editing work with just one hyphen. I chose logic over looks. It’s not an extreme illness that’s heat-related. It’s the heat, not the illness, that’s extreme. 

Hyphens have fallen somewhat out of fashion, so longer compounds are getting rarer. But I’ll keep hyphenating 30-day-dry-aged beef and extreme-heat-related illness as long as the rules allow.

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April 14, 2025

That awful pronunciation of 'nuclear'

In the Netflix series “Umbrella Academy,” Aidan Gallagher plays Number Five, a 58-year-old assassin and theoretical physicist trapped in a 13-year-old’s body.

A naturally brainy teen and gifted actor, Gallagher has no trouble convincing me Five is a late-middle-aged genius unlocking the mysteries of space-time to stop a world-ending apocalypse. In his performance, I believe every word — well, every word but one: nuclear. Five pronounces it “nucular.”

I know a lot of people share my feelings on this: There’s no vowel between the C and the L — no U to make the second syllable sound like “cue.” The spelling makes clear that the second syllable should be “clee.”

Regular readers of this blog know that language is seldom that simple. Just because one pronunciation is right doesn’t mean another is wrong.

“Though disapproved of by many, pronunciations ending in (cue-lar) have been found in widespread use among educated speakers including scientists, lawyers, professors, congressmen, U.S. cabinet members, and at least two U.S. presidents and one vice president,” Merriam-Webster’s dictionary notes. “While most common in the U.S., these pronunciations have also been heard from British and Canadian speakers.”

If you’re like me, you might find this rationale frustrating. That is, when you say, “It’s annoying that so many people pronounce it that way,’” the experts reply, “Many people pronounce it that way.” To which you reply, “I know. I just said that. That’s the problem.”

For this reason, linguists can seem at times like they’re gaslighting. But in fact, they’re just leaving out one crucial bit of information: In language, “many people do it” is the law of the land. Every word, every pronunciation and every rule of grammar was born of how people use the language. If enough of us started using “shoobeedoobee” to mean “rest assured that we’ll handle your funeral arrangements with the utmost dignity,” eventually it would mean exactly that.

Besides, for a recent column, I was happy to discover that my two-syllable pronunciation of “caramel” is fine and possibly superior. So I’d be hypocritical to insist on a phonetic pronunciation of “nuclear.”

If there’s a silver lining, for me, it’s that 20-odd years into writing about grammar, I learned a new term to describe this type of sound switch around: metathesis.

In linguistics, “metathesis” means “the process whereby a sound hops out of its proper place, so to speak, and pops up elsewhere in the word, or switches places with another sound in the word,” according to Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage.

Wikipedia gives examples that may strike a nerve. My favorite, straight from the sea: anenome in place of anemone. This one drives me nuts — not because people who use it wrong annoy me, but because years ago I declared myself incapable of ever using it right. Can’t spell it. Can’t pronounce it. I’ll sign any petition that banishes it from the English language.

Then there’s “cavalry” for “calvary.” This one’s more serious. If you get “anemone” wrong, the worst that can happen is people will think you’re doing a musical number from Sesame Street. But if you get cavalry wrong, you change your meaning. Merriam-Webster’s definition of calvary is “an open-air representation of the crucifixion of Jesus” or “an experience of usually intense mental suffering.” A cavalry is a component of an army, especially one on horseback.

“Jewlery” in place of “jewelry” is another common metathesis. I doubt I’ve ever pronounced this word the way it's spelled and don't plan to start anytime soon. "Asteriks” for “asterisk,” “aks” for “ask,” and “iorn” for “iron” are just a few more examples of common metatheses, and they all come with varying degrees of controversy. You can pick your likes and dislikes. Me, I’m soft on almost all these, except the incorrect pronunciation of “nuclear” and any pronunciation, right or wrong, of “anemone.”

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April 7, 2025

'Data is' or 'data are'?

I don’t recommend using “data” as a singular, as in, “The data on this matter is shocking.”

“Data” is an English word that, like many words, is formed from the Latin. When we adopted it, we sort of pushed aside its Latin singular form, “datum.”

But sometimes it just seems kind of odd to treat it as a plural. “I’ve seen the data and it’s shocking” sounds less weird than “I have seen the data and they're shocking.”

If you find yourself in a situation where you’d really rather treat "data" as a singular, you can. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary says it’s “singular or plural in construction.”

The dictionary adds: "Data leads a life of its own quite independent of datum, of which it was originally the plural. It occurs in two constructions: as a plural noun (like earnings), taking a plural verb and plural modifiers (as these, many, a few) but not cardinal numbers, and serving as a referent for plural pronouns (as they, them); and as an abstract mass noun (like information), taking a singular verb and singular modifiers (as this, much, little), and being referred to by a singular pronoun (it). Both constructions are standard. The plural construction is more common in print, evidently because the house style of several publishers mandates it.”

So, like so many other issues in language, it comes down to whether you’re worried what other people think of your English skills. If you’re not too worried about stickler readers judging you, then you’re free to follow Merriam-Webster’s advice.

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March 31, 2025

How many syllables in 'caramel'?

Perhaps you remember this 2003 commercial: Shaquille O'Neal corrects actor Percy Daggs III when Daggs pronounces the ingredient in a new variety of Nestle Crunch as “carmel.”

“It’s caramel,” Shaq says, hitting all three syllables. “Car-a-mel. Can’t you spell?”

I’d been pronouncing it “carmel” all my life. It’s how the people around me pronounced it. It’s all I knew. But then, I grew up in the region of Florida that spawned the first Hooters restaurant, so I didn’t have much faith in the judgment or taste of the people around me. Instead, I put my faith in Shaq. I started pronouncing it “car-a-mel.”

After all, Shaq made a good point with “Can’t you spell?” Three vowels, separated by consonants, sure look like three syllables to me.

As a self-styled “language expert,” I knew I should do a little research. And I did — 22 years later. Here’s what I just learned: the pronunciation “carmel,” with two syllables, is every bit as acceptable as the three-syllable pronunciation. In fact, the two-syllable option comes first in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, which may indicate it’s more standard.

Score one for the town that gave the world chicken wings with a side of hair mousse.

Reasonable minds may disagree. Garner’s Modern American Usage, for example, is on Team Shaq, deeming the three-syllable pronunciation superior.

Jewelry is another word that’s spelled like it has three syllables but is often pronounced with just two: jool-ry. In my world, the two-syllable pronunciation is standard. I almost never hear “joo-ul-ry.”

Merriam’s dictionary seems to prefer three syllables, though it allows two, as well. The difference is subtle, almost undetectable. “Joo-ul-ry” so buries the “ul” that it sounds nearly identical to “jool-ry,” even on the audio clip on Merriam’s website.

The pronunciation you definitely want to avoid is “joo-luh-ry,” with “luh” in the middle instead of “ul.” Merriam’s dictionary calls this pronunciation nonstandard, which is dictionary-speak for “ill-advised.”

“Realtor” is another oddly pronounced word. Instead of dropping a syllable, people add one: “reel-uh-tur.” It’s a little bizarre, but if you pay attention to how your mouth moves to say “Realtor,” it’s easy to hear why the first and second syllables could benefit from a little more separation. Regardless, the three-syllable pronunciation of “Realtor” is widely considered to be wrong. The experts in my language library say it’s always just “reel-tur.”

Perhaps the most hotly debated word of this type is “homogeneous.” Some argue, passionately, that it should be pronounced “ho-mo-GEE-nee-us,” while others insist it’s “ho-MOJ-en-us.” Actually, these are two different words.

“The more common term is homogeneous,” writes Garner’s, “which means ‘of uniform characteristics.’” It’s pronounced as five syllables, with the stress on “gee.” The word “homogenous,” has just one “e” and is pronounced with the stress on the second syllable: “ho-MOJ-en-us.” It’s a term from biology that means tissues or organs are genetically related.

Many people pronounce “homogeneous” as if they’re using the other word, “homogenous.” But if you want to say that things are similar or of uniform composition, that’s not a good idea.

“Writers are best advised to use ‘homogeneous,’ and to pronounce all five syllables,” Garner’s writes. 

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March 24, 2025

Regarding "re"

A lot of language experts will tell you to avoid the word “re,” as in, “I’d like to speak to you re scheduling.” It’s pretentious, they say, to use this Latin derivative instead of good old plain English — it’s “tasteless as a gold toothpick,” according to Theodore Bernstein’s 1965 guide “The Careful Writer.”  All of us outside the legal profession should “leave this one to the lawyers,” he wrote.

Way ahead of you, Bernstein and friends. I’ve been avoiding “re” my whole life. But unfortunately, I can’t claim that my motive has been to eschew pretentiousness, humbly sidestepping every opportunity to show off my deep knowledge of this preposition and its Latin origins.

No, I avoid it because I’ve never understood “re” well enough to even feign pretentiousness. I avoid “re” not because I’m down to earth but because I’m downright intimidated.

Is it “re:” with a colon? Is the R capitalized? Can you use it in the body of a letter or email, or only in the header or subject line? If it’s an abbreviation of “regarding,” does it need a period at the end, or does a colon preclude the need for a period? And why do you sometimes see “in” before “re”? Wouldn’t that be redundant?

The answers to all these questions are surprising — at least to me. For starters “re” is not an abbreviation for “regarding.” It’s a preposition — a real word like “at,” “of” or “with.” It’s defined not as “regarding” but as “with regard to” or “in the matter of,” which makes it a subtle shade different from “regarding” in some uses.

 “Re” doesn’t even share the same roots as “regarding.” It’s from a Latin noun, “res,” which meant “thing” or “matter.” That’s a clue why “in” is sometimes used before “re.” It’s like saying “in the matter of.” But the way Latin grammar worked, the “in” may be implied, anyway. So it’s hard to know whether “in re” or just “re” better captures “res” in what’s called the Latin “ablative” case. At least that’s the assessment of someone who gave up after half a day trying to understand Latin noun cases. (Ahem.)  

What I do know after half a day buried in books is that, in English, the “in” is optional. One of the definitions for the preposition “re” is “in re” — that is, they mean the same thing. So you can choose.

Another thing I learned is that “re” should not be capitalized unless it begins a sentence. It’s a regular word, so it works like one. Just as you don’t write “Put the book On the table,” you don’t write “See me tomorrow Re scheduling.” In fact, you’d be using the wrong word. Beginning with a capital, Re is the abbreviation for rhenium, a heavy metal.

Because “re” is a regular word, it doesn’t automatically get a colon, nor does a longer  phrase like “Re scheduling: See me tomorrow.” Yes, a colon can be used this way, but not because “re” requires it, only because in many instances the colon helps the whole sentence.

Using “re” was hard enough before email came along. Now “Re:” gets automatically added to subject lines when we reply to another message. And whoever came up with that system didn’t bother to tell us whether “Re:” was short for “regarding” or it meant a “reply” to the original email.

I say don’t worry about appearing pretentious if you use “re,” but you might consider whether it’s distracting. We’re so unused to seeing it used correctly in the middle of a sentence, lowercase with no colon, that it will surely look weird to your reader.

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March 17, 2025

A girl wasn't always a girl

Next time you hear someone ranting about how the language is going to hell in a handbasket or complaining about people misusing this or that word, ask him to define the word "girl."

In my experience, "girl" is the best example of why the language Chicken Littles don't have a leg to stand on.

You see, we actually use the word "girl" wrong, according to an older standard, that is. In the 1300s, "girl" meant a child of either sex. Yet today it means specifically a female child.

Think for a moment what it was like getting from that linguistic Point A to our Point B. There must have been a lot of confusion along the way, right? No doubt it gave language doomsayers plenty of fodder. Could you blame any witness to this transition for thinking it was a problem Could you blame him for decrying the ignorance that fueled this change or the chaos that would ensue?

With 700 years' perspective, we know that such doomsayers would have been wrong. The word "girl" as we use it today is perfectly peachy. People aren't confused by it. No one sounds ignorant for using it. Communication hasn't broken down.

In other words, what was once a wrong usage of "girl" is now right. And clearly that's not a bad thing.

When sticklers fuss over "misuse" of words like "literally" and "healthy" and "aggravate," it's because they just don't understand how words change. They don't understand that this evolution is not a bad thing. It just appears bad to anyone who lacks historical perspective.

And nothing proves this as well as a brief history of the word "girl."

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March 10, 2025

Deceptively easy?

Have you ever thought about the word “deceptively”? I hadn’t, until I came across the following in Word Court, Barbara Wallraff’s compilation from her former Atlantic Monthly column.

Here’s what a reader asked her: “A friend and I cannot agree on the meaning of phrases combining ‘depectively’ and a modifier — for example, ‘deceptively easy.’ I contest that something that is deceptively easy is, in fact, easy and is deceptive because it appears difficult. My friend argues that a deceptively easy task is one that appears easy but is difficult. Please help.”

Good one, huh? I always sort of took the former view: that "deceptively" before an adjective means that it has the qualities of that adjective, just it’s hard to see it at first. So someone who talks in a lot of big words but express a simple message is expressing a deceptively simple idea.

Unfortunately, Wallraff reported, it’s not that simple.

“The sad truth is that at this moment in history ‘deceptively easy’ means nothing in particular,” she wrote, citing the American Heritage Dictionary.

Here’s what that dictionary has to say.

“When deceptively is used to modify an adjective, the meaning is often unclear. Does the sentence ‘The pool is deceptively shallow’ mean that the pool is shallower or deeper than it appears?”

Unlike many other dictionaries, American Heritage likes to cite a Usage Panel — a group of esteemed wordy types from all across the word-pushing world — for matters like these. Here’s what American Heritage reported: “When the Usage Panel was asked to decide, 50 percent thought the pool shallower than it appears, 32 percent thought it deeper than it appears, and 18 percent said it was impossible to judge. “

As a result, American Heritage gives this advice, which is basically the same as Wallraff’s: When the context does not make the meaning of ‘deceptively clear, the sentence should be rewritten, as in; The pool is shallower than it looks’ or ‘The pool is shallow, despite its appearance.’”

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March 3, 2025

This 'whom' is a keeper

Sometimes it seems like “whom” should die. It causes so many people so much distress. Not many people know how to use it. And a lot of people who think they know how to use it don’t.

For example, I see "whom" used a lot in ways such as this: “John is a man whom I know will always help us when we need him.” People who know that “whom” is an object figure that, in a sentence like this, it’s functioning as an object of the verb “know.” But it’s not. The object of the verb “know” in this sentence is not a single word but a whole clause “who will always help us.” Clauses need subjects. The verb “help” in this clause needs a subject. So correct here would be the subject pronoun “who”: “John is a man who I know will always help us.”

Sometimes it seems “whom” is just mean. And because it’s fading from all from the most formal uses, it’s tempting to look forward to the day we can bid it good riddance.

But here’s why “whom” is not going to die: in one specific construction, people clearly prefer it.

“I’m spending the day with my sister, with who I share many interests.”

That’s totally unnatural, right? Even in the most casual usage, someone who finds herself hemmed in to a sentence like this is going to say “with whom I share” and not “with who.”

In fact, anytime the pronoun comes immediately after a preposition, people seem to prefer “whom”

with whom

to whom

from whom

True, this situation doesn’t come up much. Casual speech usually sidesteps these constructions, for example by putting the pronoun at the beginning and the preposition at the end (“Who are you going to the movies with” instead of “With whom are you going to the movies”). But in those less-common situations, I don’t see “whom” disappearing anytime soon.

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February 24, 2025

'My boyfriend and I's'?

With all the working from home, cultural divisiveness, addiction to screens and the rise of AI “companions,” humans are becoming ever more isolated. That’s a bad thing. But there’s an upside. As we go through life desperately alone and starved for human contact, at least we’re less likely to make shared possessive errors like this one from a travel post on Reddit: “I bought my boyfriend and I’s tickets at the same time.”

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen “I’s,” but it’s still a shocker. Who thinks it would be a good idea to say, “That’s I’s car” or “I should get started filing I’s taxes” or “Do these pants make I’s backside look big”? No one.

We all know “I” isn’t used as a possessive. It’s a subject: I have a car. I filed my taxes. I am wearing unflattering pants.

So how do these errors happen? How can we get so confused about a pronoun we all know so well? Human contact. The other person. In the case of that Reddit poster, her boyfriend was the culprit. Had the poor woman flown to Hawaii alone, sure, she would have missed out on a marriage proposal, but at least she would have had the sense to say, “I bought my ticket.”

This error is related to the much more common “with John and I” mistake that, frankly, almost everyone makes. “With” is a preposition, prepositions take objects and “me,” not “I,” is the object form that belongs here: “with John and me.” But “I’s” takes this to a whole new level.

It’s a safe bet that people who misuse “I” labor under the false belief that “me” is incorrect or at least improper when paired with another person. A kid who says, “Billy and me are going to the park” gets corrected pretty swiftly: “It’s ‘Billy and I,’ not ‘me,’” adults tell them. The kid walks away with the lesson that, if he wants to get to the park with the least hassle possible, he should just always use “I.”

On top of all that, we’re not taught how to handle shared possessives. Is it “My boyfriend’s and my” or “my boyfriend and my”? I’ve studied this stuff for years and even I am not comfortable with this.

I know the rules for shared possessives: “Ed’s and Louise’s cars” is correct if they own the cars individually. If they own the cars jointly, it’s “Ed and Louise’s cars.” That’s because the rule says that if possession is shared, Ed and Louise share an apostrophe and s, too. But when people possess things separately, each gets their own apostrophe and s.

That’s an easy rule when you’re working with nouns like Ed, but when you’re working with pronouns like “my,” things get weird. “Ed’s and my cars” is easy enough if Ed and I own our cars separately, but if we share cars, a strict reading of the rules requires us to say, “Ed and my cars.” The absence of an apostrophe and s after Ed’s name strikes me as unnatural. And I don’t hear other people saying “Ed and my …” No matter who owns what, they say “Ed’s and my.”

Other pronouns pose the same difficulty:  If you want to talk about the jointly owned “Ed and Louise’s cars” but you’re using a pronoun for Louisa, you’d get “Ed and her car,” which is unclear and sounds wrong.

In these cases, I openly defy the rule about sharing possession. I say “Ed’s and her cars” no matter whether they own the cars together or separately. As long as I’m not using “I’s,” it’s unlikely anyone will even know if I’m wrong.

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February 17, 2025

'Predominantly' or 'predominately'?

Here’s a word that caught my eye while I was editing an article a while back: predominately.

The context was something like “Brazil is a predominately Portuguese-speaking country.” I didn’t notice the spelling of predominately until my second read.  And spell-checker didn’t notice either.

I quietly congratulated myself for catching the error, changed it to predominantly and continued reading the piece. But a few minutes later, I got the urge to check a dictionary. To my surprise, it was in both Webster’s New World College Dictionary (the dictionary required by the style guide I was using that day) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (which is the one I use when I’m editing in Chicago style). Both list predominately as a variant of predominantly.

I understand that the dictionaries’ job is to document usage, but I don’t think I’d ever seen predominately before. Unless this spelling had been slipping unnoticed under my nose for years, I had only ever seen predominantly.

Not that it mattered. In editing, we always use to the dictionary’s preferred forms and never the variants. So predominantly was the right choice for the article.

But the whole thing was pretty surprising — not just that a spelling I’d never noticed before warranted listing in the dictionary, but because it’s a strange one.

Adverbs often derive from adjectives: smart/smartly, nice/nicely, true/truly. So the adverb predominantly makes sense as a form of the adjective predominant. But predominate is a verb, and verbs don’t usually spin off adverb forms: walk/walkly, know/knowly, keep/keeply, dominate/dominately.

Chalk this one up as another example of our ever-surprising language.

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