A good hour into a motorway journey. There's something suitably chilled on the CD player. It's early on a sun-warmed, yawn-sleepy Autumnal morning. The M1 is looking as good as the M1 can ever look: the grain store we pass is blushing in the dawning light, looking absurdly like an Art Deco palace somewhere in a riviera. We're zooming happily past lorries, and I'm smiling as I remember my (disturbingly precocious) 3-year-old niece's habit of pointing at them, telling me that they're called 'camions' in French, and then asking me what they are in Welsh. (I resist the urge to say 'llorry').
My partner is driving. Which is a good thing, as I suddenly wake from my drowsy state to become a spitting, snarling, incoherently gibbering cat-beast. He swerves, slightly, and wants to know what's wrong. I point a trembling, raging, finger at a Sainsbury's van that we're passing. 'THAT!!' I finally manage to spit out, somehow managing to force down the backwash of bile that should accompany the word.
The Sainsbury's van says 'Why not order online, we can deliver next day'.
Which should explain things somewhat.
However, earlier that day, we'd seen a 'Natures best' slogan on another van – one for a local veg box scheme – and that only warranted a slight, disdainful harrumph. So why my headaching, hate-filled, expostulating, expectorating rage at this? I suspect I was feeling rather betrayed by Sainsbury's, a brand that I feel quite warmly towards, even if it is one of the evil supermarket companies. I think I was also horrified that the slogan in question must have passed so many people on its journey from Illustrator file to van livery (which probably didn't happen for the veg box van). And not one of them regarded it quizzically for a second, re-read it, and asked, 'Should that not be...?' Perhaps the violence of my reaction was in fact the accumulated horror I felt on behalf of (or about) all those signers-off, all those quality checkers, all those brand and voice and design guardians, all those people who SHOULD KNOW BETTER.
My poor partner puts up with a lot. Many long journeys are punctuated by irritated harrumphs, guffaws and other crossness. It's difficult for him, because as a designer he doesn't quite get why I greet these grammatical insults with an agonised expression and a lip-quivering 'but it's just wrong'. There isn't a grammar of design (discuss – we have, many times, at length). He will make a judgement about whether something is well-designed or not. But he's unlikely to bust seams when something is poorly designed: just shake his head, witheringly.
It's not like I'm a grammatical luddite. I am happy – celebratory, in fact – about the idea of language as an evolving being. When my linguistics tutor likened people who sigh about the decline and fall of the language to people who can't bear to see a damp teaspoon in the sugar, I nodded brightly. In spoken language, in drama, in film, in art, in lyrics, in literature, in poetry – I love a bit of wordplay, me. Heck knows I muck about with grammar enough. I can be frivolous with a full stop when I fancy. I just can't deal when it's so obviously a mistake, so brazenly a balls-up, so glaringly a huge, careless whoopsie. When it's on the side of a van.
The van in question, by the way, was being towed by a breakdown truck. I am finding some comfort from believing that the engine expired in protest.
Sunday, 7 October 2007
Tuesday, 2 October 2007
Hype and hyphenation
So farewell then, brave hyphen. There have been numerous articles published recently lamenting the loss of the hyphen from our punctation armoury. This flourish of obituaries (not sure what the collective noun should be for obituaries: garland? Threnody? Chrysanthemum-cushion?) has been prompted by the latest revision of the OED, which removes hyphens from terms such as figleaf and leapfrog. See this Guardian article (one of many). (Seriously, how often do they revise the thing? Five-yearly, the article claims. I'm sure I see these stories every fortnight.)
Personally, I'm hoping that reports of the hyphen's demise have been exaggerated. Not least because my surname sports one - or at least it does when companies' processes can support it and the customer service rep understands what I mean when I spell my name. In common with other hyphenated friends, I've had apostrophes, slashes and question marks before now.
But my fears for the beleaguered hyphen's future go beyond my personal connection. I'm afraid that I have become a hyphen stickler. To be fair, hyphens have only recently joined my list of Things To Fume About When Spotted On Tube Posters. And they're not particularly high on that list. (Comma splices and inappropriate apostrophes in its jostle for the top spot.) I'm not so worried about fig-leaf vs figleaf; I think either is perfectly acceptable, and the same goes for most other composite nouns. But I have become someone who can write 'we need the up-to-date file from you so that we can check all corrections are up to date' with a calm smile. In other words, my urge to hyphenate (most) pre-positive compound adjectives will easily pummel my urge for consistency into the floor.
It's fair to say I have a love-hate relationship with hyphens. It's interesting that even the mighty Fowler's is ambivalent about the tricksy little blighters. In the latest edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage, there's a lengthy quotation from an inconsistently hyphenated (not inconsistently-hyphenated) newsletter, followed by a bignomous exposition on the subject. At the end, there's a haughty mutter: 'hyphening should not become burdensome'. But then there's the Fowlerian equivalent of Mutley's sassenfrassen: 'But that newsletter… should have been tidied up, nevertheless'.
Fowler's recommends considering a rewrite (eg rewriting early-nineteenth-century poets to poets of the early nineteenth century), which seems eminently sensible, and backs up my own personal rule about difficult grammar and punctuation: if in doubt, cheat. If a sentence causes your brain to rotate screech-rusty cogs in its comprehension engine, it's likely to have the same effect on your readers.
I find hyphenation very difficult to explain to clients. On more than one occasion I've been instructed to remove all hyphens, regardless of their syntactical worth. In one case, this one-out-all-out rule has swept en dashes away too (which I could easily rant about for another two days. I'd blame Lynne Truss, but it's not really her fault). It's a growing phenomenon: lists of verboten terms and punctuation marks are burgeoning – mandates that go well beyond traditional style guides. I look forward to being banned from using semicolons soon – or commas, perhaps.
A quick PS: there's a nice discussion of the issues here. It includes an example of the problems hyphen-removal can cause from Monty Python, which I'd forgotten: the difference between a man eating blancmange and a man-eating blancmange. Perfect.
Personally, I'm hoping that reports of the hyphen's demise have been exaggerated. Not least because my surname sports one - or at least it does when companies' processes can support it and the customer service rep understands what I mean when I spell my name. In common with other hyphenated friends, I've had apostrophes, slashes and question marks before now.
But my fears for the beleaguered hyphen's future go beyond my personal connection. I'm afraid that I have become a hyphen stickler. To be fair, hyphens have only recently joined my list of Things To Fume About When Spotted On Tube Posters. And they're not particularly high on that list. (Comma splices and inappropriate apostrophes in its jostle for the top spot.) I'm not so worried about fig-leaf vs figleaf; I think either is perfectly acceptable, and the same goes for most other composite nouns. But I have become someone who can write 'we need the up-to-date file from you so that we can check all corrections are up to date' with a calm smile. In other words, my urge to hyphenate (most) pre-positive compound adjectives will easily pummel my urge for consistency into the floor.
It's fair to say I have a love-hate relationship with hyphens. It's interesting that even the mighty Fowler's is ambivalent about the tricksy little blighters. In the latest edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage, there's a lengthy quotation from an inconsistently hyphenated (not inconsistently-hyphenated) newsletter, followed by a bignomous exposition on the subject. At the end, there's a haughty mutter: 'hyphening should not become burdensome'. But then there's the Fowlerian equivalent of Mutley's sassenfrassen: 'But that newsletter… should have been tidied up, nevertheless'.
Fowler's recommends considering a rewrite (eg rewriting early-nineteenth-century poets to poets of the early nineteenth century), which seems eminently sensible, and backs up my own personal rule about difficult grammar and punctuation: if in doubt, cheat. If a sentence causes your brain to rotate screech-rusty cogs in its comprehension engine, it's likely to have the same effect on your readers.
I find hyphenation very difficult to explain to clients. On more than one occasion I've been instructed to remove all hyphens, regardless of their syntactical worth. In one case, this one-out-all-out rule has swept en dashes away too (which I could easily rant about for another two days. I'd blame Lynne Truss, but it's not really her fault). It's a growing phenomenon: lists of verboten terms and punctuation marks are burgeoning – mandates that go well beyond traditional style guides. I look forward to being banned from using semicolons soon – or commas, perhaps.
A quick PS: there's a nice discussion of the issues here. It includes an example of the problems hyphen-removal can cause from Monty Python, which I'd forgotten: the difference between a man eating blancmange and a man-eating blancmange. Perfect.
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