ATTN: Copyeditors and Grammar Fiends

"I'm going to check my facebook"

"I'm going to check facebook"

?? I always say the first but I think it might be odd?

i don't think it matters, does it? it's a question of semantics. (number of times i've used that as a get-out: 2,430,431.)

well, none of it really matters, silly!

I just thought I'd raise the question here, rather than start a poll innit

I'm going to check Facebook / I'm going to check MY Facebook PAGE / (ACCOUNT)

... would seem like the fussy technical thing, but yeah, I can't imagine this mattering, and I can't imagine people using Facebook long enough for anyone outside of the marketing division to be remotely bothered about whether you have "a Facebook" or "a Facebook page/account"

Although I do feel like I've seen this raised with "MySpace," because it has MY in it, therefore it's easy to think of yourself as having "a MySpace" and not "a MySpace account"

So umm hahaha I think the popular logic might be that Facebook is a collective BOOK on which you have a "page," but MySpace is yours, it's your MySpace, not an account on Everyone'sSpace

"I'm going to check my Facepage" is correct.

well, none of it really matters, silly!

this should be the board description for ILX. or life.

ok here's one. if you're using the word "then" to mean "former," but the title is two words, where do hyphens go? "as suggested by his then law clerk william rehnquist." original says "then-law clerk" but i think that's wrong. it has to be either no hyphens or "then-law-clerk," doesn't it? can't find it in chicago manual.

I would go with zero hyphens here, unless you are required to diagram the sentence.

Or else rephrase it to eliminate the English-teacher-nip.

but i think that's wrong. it has to be either no hyphens or "then-law-clerk," doesn't it?

why? could you say then-clerk?

or just 'clerk'?

I don't understand why "law clerk" would have a hypen? Maybe I'm not thinking about it right, but "then-law clerk" seems reasonable to me.

No hyphen. In that case "then" functions as a simple adjective, just like "former." You would only use a hyphen if it were something like "his then-liberal law clerk William Rehnquist."

I mean, I wouldn't hyphenate "state cop" or "baseball player" or "English teacher" so I don't see the point....

Or: "as suggested by William Rehnquist, his law clerk at the time."

I think the confusion here is that "then law clerk" looks like an adjectival phrase that modifies the noun William Rehnquist (in which case hyphenating the whole thing seems useful), but it's not: "law clerk" is the noun and "William Rehnquist" is an appositive.

ohhh ok yeah, you're right. that's what i was thinking. i can't get rid of it because i'm editing, not writing.

The Chicago Manual of Style contains a handy solution to this sort of thing, but it's most easily found not under "hypens" but under EN-DASHES! This is the thing they are most awesome and useful for! As discussed upthread. Leaving aside Jaymc's grammatical objection in this instance, the answer to "I need to hyphenate but one of the terms is two words" is as follows:

World War II(1/N)era
Pulitzer Price(1/N)winning

and in this instance, if you wanted

then(1/N)law clerk

ok i will look into that right now. thanks! i think it's still a hyphen though because we (lawl review) don't really follow chicago except as a last resort, and en-dashes are only supposed to signify a range of numbers.

Well just FY general I, that's not any kind of Chicago-specific rule -- I think of it as a pretty generally accepted use of the en-dash (and it's followed in most publications I read, including not-that-fussy ones like Entertainment Weekly and online ones like Slate) ...

There are instances where it's necessary for clarity, but the only example springing to mind is the British one about black cab-drivers (who are black and drive cabs) and black cab(1/N)drivers (who drive black cabs and are whatever color they are)

i just read it and you are right. i might go for the en-dash anyway because it does make more sense and doesn't really break the rules, and because i'm the boss.

but the only example springing to mind is the British one about black cab-drivers (who are black and drive cabs) and black cab(1/N)drivers (who drive black cabs and are whatever color they are)

This example is good for why you would want to use a hyphen versus not use a hyphen, but an en dash shouldn't even come into it unless it's something like "black cab(1/n)driver license."

The example I used upthread, which I like, is "a screwdriver is a vodka(1/n)orange-juice concoction."

^^^^^this is AMA's style -- using the en in combination with a hyphen, not instead of.

True dat, Jaymc, that example only works with modifying ... I was totally unaware of any style that actually used the other hyphen, though I suppose it's visually sensible. (Though I will admit to being distrustful of AMA style, since so much of it is optimized for, like, scientific uses that are not hugely relevant to the rest of us...)

once again, US english kicks UK english's arse. i love that en-dash convention but it just isn't used here, and would immediately be "corrected".

that said: in this instance i don't think i'd use it even if i could. "then law clerk" -- no punctuation -- seems absolutely perfect to me.

arse ass.

this is all looking like en-dash abuse to me.

i like the current trend of referring to it as "the facebook" or "the myspace".

I keep encountering our hacks writing things like "actress, activist and mum-of-six Angelina Jolie..." - I hate those hyphens in "mum of six" and always remove them but I can't find any precedent to support (or disprove) my gut feeling. Anyone? I know the tabs use ths hyphenated style, but... ugh I just think it's horrible.

hmm. "mum of six" is a compound prenominal modifier; ie the three words are doing the work of one adjective. so i'd argue that the hyphens are pretty much vital.

ultimately, what you're doing is trying to make it easier for the reader; to ensure there's no ambiguity. OK, in that example it's unlikely there's going to be any. but still ...

... just leave 'em in, eh? :)

But in my example above, it serves the same purpose as "actress" and "activist", both of which are nouns.

If, say someone existed who deeply disliked all mothers who had six children, I could admittedly say "Look out for mum-of-six-hating misanthrope Dave Smith", but otherwise... I dunno.

And actually, I think I'd still say "...mum of six-hating misanthrope..." anyway!

aye, "mum-of-six-hating" would be fine there; or you could use the awesome US en-dash convention discussed above. "mum of six-hating" is just plain wrong, though -- that would suggest Dave Smith is a misanthrope who hates the number six, and you're talking about his mum.

also, "actress" and "activist" might be nouns but the fact remains that in your example they're modifying the subject -- "angelina jolie" -- as is "mum-of-six", so they're working as adjectives. (i used to be able to explain this shit a lot more eloquently, and it annoys me that i've lost track of some of the technicalities.) either way: "but it's OK in this example!" doesn't quite cut it, because you're going to come across an example where it isn't OK, and that's where mr hyphen is really going to be your friend.

it saddens me slightly when "i don't like this rule of grammar so i'm going to ignore it" becomes house style, but hey: that's the case in some form or another in pretty much every UK newsroom, i suppose ;)

Alright, point taken - hyphens it is!

fwiw our Style Guide was constructed pretty much from scratch by me, with a lot of help from the guides of The Graun, The Economist, the Oxford Dictionary for Wrtiters & Editors, and a host of other source texts. It's also had to work with our amiable host's Brand Style - which, trust me, frequently sees the finer points of grammar (and decades of widespread global precedent) as mere irritants getting in the way of Flogging A Lot Of Stuff. Conflicting precedents are manifold, and sometimes I just have to call it for the sake of consistency.

Don't even start me on em and en-dashes - you'd think they might not even matter online, but they cause me more fucking headaches than any other punctuation mark by far!

really? is that because of online formatting issues, or something else? really, i'm a punctuation geek: i'm genuinely fascinated, if you've got the time (and inclination) to share ;)

It comes down to CMS limitations. We generally use three different management systems concurrently, not all of which can differentiate between em and en-dashes - and that's not even meentioning the reductive system we use for wap content.

I'm still seriously considering banning the use of em dashes altogether because every time someone uses one they have to insert a little bit of html into the CMS and 99% of the time they can't be fucked to do so...

Wow, typos all over my last two posts! I'll blame my oversensitive new keyboard for now...

perhaps you can suggest they use two hyphens stiched together if they can't be bothered to use an em-dash. it doesn't look as clean and it ends up being longer than an em-dash actually is but it does the job.

just out of curiosity
- hyphen!
– en-dash!
— em-dash!
-- makeshift em-dash for lazies!

...or just tell them to use hyphens for everything because that's all Notepad can handle and everything has to go through it before hitting the CMS!

Actually, we never use the m-dash at all; it's hyphen or en, and the en only shows up in some copy because Word creates it automatically.

em-dash obv.

Actress, activist and mum of six, Angelina Jolie, ...

The comma would remove any chance of confusion, and it IS a noun phrase, so I don't think it should have hyphens.

Isn't it just an inversion of Angelina Jolie, who is an actress, activist and mum of six, ...

(Although some noun phrases DO of course have hyphens - I mean I don't think it should get hyphens just because of where it is in that sentence.)

Isn't it just an inversion of Angelina Jolie, who is an actress, activist and mum of six

not necessarily. commas are really not an elegant solution to this sort of thing. it's a short step from there to stuff like: "journalist, grimly fiendish, is a short-arsed pedant", which i see every so often (interestingly, often from older writers who should know better).

regardless of what any of us might think about hyphens, there's a reasonably straightforward set of rules that govern their use (IIRC the oxford dictionary for writers and editors is very good on this). commas, however, are a free for all (and remember: i spent several months ... weeks ... OK, hours of my life studying the little fuckers for my undergrad dissertation) so although they can be used in this sort of situation, it's not necessarily a good idea to do so because you can cause more problems than you solve, and you end up with a comma-strewn mess that nobody can easily parse.

i seem to be on a mission here to rep for the hyphen. well, if that's my role in life ...

a free for all
a free-for-all

hmm. if i'd re-read that before posting, i'd definitely have hyphenated. i'm not doing myself any favours here.

"journalist grimly fiendish" is a bit slapdash - you wouldn't say that if you were writing a novel, would you?

If you said An actress, activist and mum of six, Angelina Jolie ... (dropping my extra comma after Jolie, as well) it would work, but the grammar is different. I'm happy to say I woz rong.

external debt repayment obligations
external debt repayments
natural gas fired capacity

How would you hyphenate the above, without recourse to an en dash?

external-debt-repayment obligations
external-debt repayments
natural-gas-fired capacity

Yup, that's how I'd do 'em too, but I just don't like multiple hyphens!

Iranian-rial-financed projects?