Don't Get Sad; Get Even

When I was in eighth grade, this guy named Chris dumped me out of nowhere after two weeks of what I thought had been total bliss.

I was devastated. I would come home from school, lock myself in my room, listen to my U2 Joshua Tree cassette tape over and over again, and ask myself why Chris still hadn’t found what he was looking for in me. Was it my bangs? Were they not big enough? Was it my jeans? Were they not acid-washed enough?

I was so depressed even my teachers noticed.

If I could turn back time, I would have handled things a bit differently. Instead of suffering, I would have made Chris suffer.

In fact, I would have started a club called the All-Ex-Self-Esteem club. My club would have focused on preserving post break-up self-esteem by engaging in activities against all exes.

The boys in the club would have been responsible for smearing Nair into our ex-boyfriends’ football helmets. The girls in the club would have befriended club members’ ex-girlfriends and put laxatives into their Diet Cokes. There would have been egging and TPing and rumor spreading. It would have been grand!

In addition to helping us poor dumpees maintain our fragile junior high self-esteem, the All-Ex-Self-Esteem club would have helped us grammatically—it would have helped us remember when to use hyphens.

When used as prefixes, the words all, ex and self use hyphens:

all-encompassing, all-knowing, all-inclusive

ex-boyfriend, ex-wife, ex-patriot, ex-Patriot's fan

self-loathing, self-satisfied, self-aware

A club that builds self-esteem and grammar skills! It's not too late. Who’s in? I’ll provide the Nair.

(Do they even still make Nair?)

One Hand-Clapping

One day, Buddha was asked ten questions by some monks. He refused to answer these ten questions, and, consequently, they have become known as the unanswerable questions. Buddha claimed that knowing the answers to such questions only hinders our advancement toward liberation. (Good one, Buddha. That’s also how I respond to my students’ questions when I don’t know the answers.)

The monks’ questions were fancy metaphysical ones like whether or not the world is eternal, whether or not the soul is identical with the body, whether or not a perfectly enlightened being exists after death, and whether or not a hyphen is required in between Buddha and belly.

Okay, fine, the monks didn’t ask Buddha about the hyphen, but they might as well have; the hyphen is as elusive as the mysteries of the universe.

I attempted to reach Buddha in hopes that he might answer the following question: Is there a rule that explains when to express words as two words, one compound word, or a hyphenated word?

I texted him, left him three voicemails and tweeted him, and he never got back to me—so I consulted some grammar gurus instead.

“To understand the hyphen,” the grammar gurus said, “one must first contemplate the sound of one hand clapping.”

In other words, nobody really knows. The consensus is this: when in doubt about whether or not two words should be hyphenated, consult the dictionary.

As you can imagine, that response did not quench my thirst for the knowledge I was seeking.

So I delved deeper into the grammatical sea of knowledge, and I found an explanation that was a bit more satisfying. I found it in the good old Texas Law Review Manual of Style. It advised that we should join two words with a hyphen “if doing so will significantly aid the reader in recognizing the compound adjective.”

So, basically, we should add a hyphen if it’s needed to clarify our meaning.

For example, if I want to express to my reader that my friend Karen loves porn, I would write the following:

Karen is a dirty-movie enthusiast.

Without the hyphen, the reader might think that Karen loves movies but hates showers:

Karen is a dirty movie enthusiast.

If I want to express that Don Juan is a prominent lover, I would use the hyphen:

Don Juan is a big-time lover.

Without the hyphen, it would appear that he is a large person who loves time:

Don Juan is a big time lover.

We have only scratched the surface of the hyphen’s infinite mysteries. More will be revealed in next week’s post.

Until then, what is the sound of one hand clapping? Is it different from the sound of one hand-clapping?

References:

“Compound Words: When To Hyphenate.” Get It Write. 27 April 2003. Web. 1 February 2012.

“The Ten Unanswered Questions.” Web. 1 February 2012. http://www.mi-lam.org/pdf/TenQuestions.pdf.

They're Just Like Us

Cindy Crawford was my high school sweetheart’s celebrity crush. On the one hand, it was cool because at least she and I both had brown hair and brown eyes. On the other hand, it sucked because that’s where the similarities ended. She’s a Pisces; I’m a Capricorn. She’s from Illinois; I’m from California. She has legs that go on for days; I have legs that go on from Monday 11-11:45 (noon in heels).

Imagine how daunting it was to go through the awkward high school years with this as my competition:

I was so relieved when I read an interview with Cindy in which she said, “Even I don’t look like Cindy Crawford in the morning.”

Take that, High School Boyfriend!

Well, if Cindy is brave enough to admit that she’s not as perfect as people think she is, then I guess I can do the same. You see, as you can probably imagine, I am the grammar go-to gal on campus. I receive daily phone calls requesting grammar advice from my colleagues. And, sometimes I do know the answer off the top of my head. My secret shame is that often I will Google their questions. Of course, I don’t tell anyone this. I like people to think I’m perfect.

One of the questions I am rarely confident about answering is when I’m asked if two words should be hyphenated, like should it be long legged or long-legged? But, here’s the good news: my grammar gurus don’t always know either. For example, Grammar Girl wrote, “The safest thing to do when you're unsure about hyphenating is to look the words up in a dictionary.” Diane Hacker wrote, “The dictionary will tell you whether to treat a compound word as a hyphenated compound, as one word, or as two words. If the compound word is not in the dictionary, then treat it as two words.”

So, yes, double check with the dictionary, but here are some rules that may help when you are writing in the jungle and have forgotten your dictionary and can’t get Wi-Fi:

· Use a hyphen when two or more words work together to describe a noun.

Sexy-model behavior

(The way sexy models behave)

Sexy model behavior

(When being good is deemed sexy)

· Use a hyphen between compound numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine.

· Use a hyphen with the prefixes self-, ex-, and all-.

My ex-boyfriend’s all-consuming obsession with Cindy Crawford did not boost my self-esteem.

If only I were a Pisces from Illinois!