An Age-Old Problem

“This is it, the Hunt & Peck,” Sgt. Dis Connect said.

He opened the door and let Grammar Smith walk in before him.

Grammar peered across the dim barroom. There wasn’t much going on. A few Oxford commas were in the corner, hunched over their drinks, commiserating over their lot. Slumped at the bar, nursing a cocktail, was Grammar’s prey.

“Henrietta Hyphen?” Grammar asked as she and Dis approached the bar.

“Who wants to know?”

“I’m Inspector Grammar Smith of the Department of English Language Offenses. This is Sgt. Dis Connect.” They flashed their badges.

“We’d like you to come down to the station to have a chat,” Grammar continued.

“Why?” Ms. Hyphen wasn’t exactly belligerent; she was just strongly uncooperative.

“We’ve had a complaint that you assaulted a news reporter.”

“Are you kidding me?! She actually filed a complaint? That idiot was making my life miserable. She couldn’t decide when she wanted me and when she didn’t. What an airhead!”

“What do you mean?” Grammar asked.

“She kept tryingt to throw me in places where I didn’t belong. She’d write someone was ‘24-years-old’ or, even worse, ‘18-years old.’ Then she’d write ‘the 4 year old boy’ which is totally wrong. Yeah, I got huffy and gave her a shove, but that’s not assault.”

“Hold on a second,” Grammar said. She consulted the AP Stylebook site on her tablet. (She’d been tricked before by “backyard,” which the AP says should always be one word.)

Under “ages,” she found that hyphens should only be used when an age is being used as an adjective before a noun or as a noun: the 25-year-old scotch, the 5-year-old, or the 105-year-old square dancer.

However, it should be The United States is 241 years old.

“Well, the reporter was wrong and doesn’t seem to understand how to properly punctuate compound adjectives. However, you still shouldn’t have put your hands on her,” Grammar said. “I’ll  put this down as unfounded, but stay out of trouble.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Henrietta turned back to her drink.

 

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Weekend Wrinkle: One Word or Two?

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At the urging of Mona the dog (head cheerleader), DC the cat (chief scheduler – mealtimes must not be ignored!), and several human friends, we have decided the weekend should start early. As a result, I am moving Weekend Wrinkle to Thursdays.

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“I dunno,” Dis Connect scratched his head. “Should it be one word or two?”

“It depends on how you’re using it,” Grammar Smith noted.

The culprit was backyard.

“If you’re talking about the yard in the back of a house, it’s two words: back yard,” Grammar explained. “If you’re using it to describe something else, then it’s one word: backyard grill.”

This is a problem many writers seem to have; when should a word actually be two words? This comes into play when we’re using a compound adjective to describe a noun. In that case, the two words should be one.

“Everyday is being misused again,” the dispatcher notified Grammar.

She sighed. She was tired of tracking down such blatant mistakes. She couldn’t understand what motivated writers to get this wrong so often.

Writers strive to write something every day. In this instance, “every” is an adjective describing the noun “day.”

Intense tapping on the computer’s keyboard for hours is an everyday occurrence. In this instance, “everyday” is a compound adjective describing the noun “occurrence.”

Grabbing her trench coat and hat, Grammar walked out into the misty back yard to track down an everyday error.