Oooh I like a good hyphen. Once I belonged to a fb group given over to 'hyphenators', who liked to 'help' local signs (hate 'signage'-did you read Joe Bennett recently on that particular naffness?) by adding hyphens & would carry chalk & pens to facilitate this, 'with love in their hearts' naturally. I left after political correctness overcame some of the group-ees eventually & that overcame me. Prior to that we had some good fun.
Thank you Hilary. I'm a bit of a fan of hyphens, myself, though I tend to agree with whoever first said "If you take hyphens seriously, you will surely go mad". I didn't see the Joe Bennett article, but I'll look for it. He's a wonderful writer.
I realise I was doing my former fb page an injustice...forgetting that it was modelled on the UK site of the Grammar Vigilantes, started by the bloke who went around removing stray apostrophes & the like..valiant work it must be said. I was just there for the 'shits & giggles' as they say, until those ran dry.
Your mention of chemistry reminds me of something I tried to look up recently, another oddly imprecise usage. I was puzzled by the suffixes -ide, -ite, and -ate. Turns out that sodium chloride means just sodium and chlorine. Sodium chlorite means sodium and chlorine and "some" oxygen. Sodium chlorate means sodium and chlorine and "more" oxygen than the other.
These suffixes suffered the relatinizing trick very recently. Until about 1910 they were -id, -it, and -ate. (Not -at.) I was driven to look them up after running into a lot of strange spellings like thermit and carbon dioxid. The eless form must have been from German.
‘Well, that’s alright then.’ Ken Grace, my hero, writes ‘alright’??? I can’t believe it.
If it's ok with OED and Merriam-Webster, Teresa, it's ok with me! (And thank you for calling me your hero. I'm going to frame that.)
Oooh I like a good hyphen. Once I belonged to a fb group given over to 'hyphenators', who liked to 'help' local signs (hate 'signage'-did you read Joe Bennett recently on that particular naffness?) by adding hyphens & would carry chalk & pens to facilitate this, 'with love in their hearts' naturally. I left after political correctness overcame some of the group-ees eventually & that overcame me. Prior to that we had some good fun.
Nice piece.
Thank you Hilary. I'm a bit of a fan of hyphens, myself, though I tend to agree with whoever first said "If you take hyphens seriously, you will surely go mad". I didn't see the Joe Bennett article, but I'll look for it. He's a wonderful writer.
...haha...mad I probably already is.
I realise I was doing my former fb page an injustice...forgetting that it was modelled on the UK site of the Grammar Vigilantes, started by the bloke who went around removing stray apostrophes & the like..valiant work it must be said. I was just there for the 'shits & giggles' as they say, until those ran dry.
Your mention of chemistry reminds me of something I tried to look up recently, another oddly imprecise usage. I was puzzled by the suffixes -ide, -ite, and -ate. Turns out that sodium chloride means just sodium and chlorine. Sodium chlorite means sodium and chlorine and "some" oxygen. Sodium chlorate means sodium and chlorine and "more" oxygen than the other.
These suffixes suffered the relatinizing trick very recently. Until about 1910 they were -id, -it, and -ate. (Not -at.) I was driven to look them up after running into a lot of strange spellings like thermit and carbon dioxid. The eless form must have been from German.