Battling some stupid little lines

JUNE CASAGRANDE

Hallelujah.

That’s the word that rang over and over in my mind as I turned the

pages of a book I just discovered. “Lapsing Into a Comma: A

Curmudgeon’s Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print --

and How to Avoid Them” first came out in 2000, but it didn’t come

onto my radar until just this month.

The author, Washington Post Business Desk Copy Desk Chief Bill

Walsh, starts off with a very involved and surprisingly passionate

discussion of hyphenation. That’s where my hallelujahs came in. That

is, before I noticed something fishy.

As a former copy editor who will never get the job out of her

system, I’m haunted by hyphens. I’m not alone. Most copy editors are

obsessed with the little stinkers. And I think I finally figured out

why: As copy editors, hyphenation is the first thing we learn and the

last thing we can ever truly know. We all want to shout “eureka!”

when we first learn Rule No. 1 of hyphenation, which is that hyphens

should be used for compound modifiers. Suddenly we understand why

reddish-brown hair is reddish brown, why a victory on the home field

is a home-field victory -- because before the nouns, the pairs of

words are teaming up to “modify” the noun that follows. But our glory

at this discovery is short-lived when we realize it’s not that

simple. A good-looking man is still good-looking, hyphen and all.

Suddenly everything we copy editors thought we knew goes flying

out the window as we stare desperately at the little half dash and

wish some knight in shining armor would come and make it all make

sense. If you think I’m overstating the complexity of hyphens, check

Merriam Webster’s and you’ll see that a water-skier water-skis on

water skis.

Enter Walsh. Like a true hero, he gallops into the darkest corners

of the hyphen’s darkest domains, answering the questions that scare

the pants off of mere mortal copy editors.

“While some phrases acquire hyphens when they’re placed before a

term they modify, others already came with the hyphens and should

never lose them. A book that is easy to read is ‘an easy-to-read

book: The phrase ‘easy to read’ occurs naturally without hyphens but

sprouts those hyphens in the modifier role. But fat-free yogurt is

never hyphen-free: Fat-free, like ‘self-made’ and ‘hard-working’, was

born as a modifier, hyphen and all.”

In Walsh’s hands this quagmire is suddenly simple, manageable and

logical. Here’s another godsend for copy editors.

“Compound verbs should be hyphenated: ‘Holyfield head-butted his

opponent.’ ‘I copy-edited the story.’ ‘She pole-vaulted.’”

Walsh even tackles the dreaded compounds that defy normal

hyphenation rules.

“Even if you eschew the hyphen when ‘high school’ is a modifier

(‘high school students’), you cannot apply that logic when that

modifier gains an addition. ‘High school-age students’ means

‘school-age students who are under the influence of drugs.’ It’s

‘high-school-age students.’ Don’t be afraid. The hyphens won’t gang

up and grab you.”

The hallelujahs and grateful sighs of relief continue right up

until the reader starts to get anxious for some attribution. Where

does Walsh get this incredible stuff? Where in his Associated Press

Stylebook or Chicago Manual of Style or Strunk and White did he mine

this pure, shining gold?

And that’s when Toto pulls back the curtain and we see that,

behind the great and mighty Oz, there is just one man.

The source Walsh relies on for these very tricky judgment calls is

none other than Walsh himself.

At this point, I should note that the guy has impressive

experience and superb judgment. If America were to hold an election

for a king of hyphenation, Walsh would get my vote hands down. The

problem is that we don’t. While that didn’t stop Walsh from writing a

guide and hoping it would be cited as a definitive authority on the

subject, these aren’t rules. They’re just guidelines. Excellent,

insightful guidelines that aren’t worth a hill of beans in an

argument with any other copy editor citing any other authority. And I

bet that, when the business section of the Washington Post copy-edits

something differently from the main section of the Washington Post,

waving this little book in the face of the dissenting copy desk chief

probably doesn’t settle the matter.

* JUNE CASAGRANDE is a freelance writer. She can be reached at

[email protected].