64-straight games

Instigator. ;D

 

Wow. Six pages on something that's not even debatable. The SIDs on my beat go nuts with the hyphens in their releases, and it drives me crazy.

 

That's where it began bugging me, my alma mater's SID releases. The former SID has it in his mind that he's supposed to use that hyphen, and is not going to be swayed.

 

Guilty. And, for the record, "straight" used in this example isn't so much bad grammar as it is a evolved use of the word that is still resisted by some folks.

I had a SE who refused to allow it and if have probably spent a combined 1,200 hours of my life changing "straight" to "consecutive" in AP stories.

 

If "evolved" means accepting bad grammar and incorrect usage, then we're in pretty sad shape.

 

That may be true, but we're evolving!

 

I'm late on this. People <em>really</em> write "could of"? Sheesh!

We had a guy where I work once write "For all intensive purposes", which is pretty rough.

 

Did you ever write about gay and consecutive couples?

 

Our place, too.

I ended up codifying the hyphenate-or-not question for our desk. This will probably out me to some, but it's worth it if it proves helpful to anybody out there. From our stylebook:

COMPOUND MODIFIERS AND HYPHENS

This is a grammatical issue that leads to wild inconsistency in the stories we publish. The general movement these days, judging from our copy (wire and locally produced), is to eschew hyphens in compound modifiers unless ambiguity would result. The problem with that approach is in perception: One person’s clarity is another’s ambiguity.

Accordingly, we’re instituting some guidelines that, we hope, will round us into form:

* First, be sure you’re actually dealing with a compound modifier and not a single adjective modifying a noun phrase. Here’s a common noun phrase from the world of sports: consecutive victory. Accordingly, you wouldn’t hyphenate “sixth consecutive victory.”

* Once you’re sure you’ve hooked a compound, look in the AP stylebook for an explicit ruling on the specific compound in question. The general rule, as outlined in the punctuation section, is far less reliable — so much so that even AP’s own writers and editors follow it inconsistently, making it almost useless.

* If you don’t find the compound in the AP stylebook, check the dictionary (Webster’s New World College Edition), which governs everything AP doesn’t. The dictionary, for example, calls for a hyphen in “ice cream” as a compound modifier (e.g., “ice-cream cone”). While that might strike you as overly rigid, hyphenate away. Because you know what happens once we start disregarding the dictionary willy-nilly: collapsing schools, anarchy, cats and dogs living together in sin and other enormities too horrible to mention.

So, let’s say for argument’s sake that you haven’t found satisfaction from AP or the dictionary. Here’s how you arrive at a solution:

* In noun-noun combinations (stream access bill, coalbed methane drilling, etc.), no hyphen. This will come up a lot with legislation and other government-related stuff.

* In adjective-noun or noun-adjective combinations (small-arms fire, right-field fence, time-consuming task, AIDS-related complications, user-friendly, etc.), use a hyphen. Also use a hyphen when those compounds are backloaded into a sentence (the man is well-known, her advice is well-regarded, he is quick-witted, etc.)

* Here comes a mouthful: In any compound modifier of three or more words in which at least one is an adjective, use the hyphens throughout. For example: property-tax-related bills (not property tax-related bills).

* In any case where ambiguity is evident, regardless of combination, use the hyphen. No amount of codification will eliminate the need for writers and editors to practice discretion. And thank goodness for that, or else we’re all filling out job applications at Albertsons (no apostrophe).

* One last hint: It’s OK to write around a problem. Sometimes it’s better to find a new construction than to untangle a pile-up of modifiers. “He is awaiting trial on a charge of immigration fraud” sounds a lot less stilted than “He is awaiting trial on an immigration fraud charge.” (And never mind the extra words; we’re talking about clarity here, not brevity.)

As ever, a small number of adjective-noun compounds, owing to common usage, will remain un-hyphenated: middle school, high school, real estate, civil rights, mental health, natural gas. We will err on the restrictive side in granting these exceptions, however. The guiding principle is that a hyphen will almost never inhibit clarity, while the absence of one can certainly lead to unclear writing and unhealthy relations between felines and canines, both of which are outcomes we should all strive to avoid.

Finally, this by no means covers all possibilities and combinations. We’ll just grapple with the ones that don’t neatly fall into categories as they come up.

 

Wow, thanks for posting this. I might print it out for our staff.
However, there are some in which I might even tell Webster to screw off. Ice cream cone, to me, is a noun, not a compound modifier. Property tax is a noun, thus, property tax-related bill.

 

Yeah, there was some hue and cry about ice-cream cone here, too. It's not one I'll lose sleep over, but I wanted to make sure that our small staff follows the steps.

Gotta have that second hyphen in property-tax-related as a modifier, though. With hyphens, it's all or nothing.