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John Lemke

Hyphenating Prefixes - 0 views

www.dailywritingtips.com/hyphenating-prefixes

2014 writing WriteLink freelance copywriting hyphens grammar words

shared by John Lemke on 07 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • John Lemke on 07 Jun 14
     
    Personally, I err on the side of using the hyphen. However, there seems to be much disagreement on the topic of when to hyphenate.
John Lemke

Compound Plurals - 0 views

www.dailywritingtips.com/compound-plurals

2014 compound plurals writing freelance copywriting tips grammar

shared by John Lemke on 05 May 14 - No Cached
  • In regard to American usage, the Chicago Manual of Style recommends that writers consult Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary for “tricky” compounds like fathers-in-law, courts-marital, and chefs d’oeuvre, adding, “For those not listed, common sense can usually provide the answer.”
  • Compound nouns are of three kinds: open, closed, and hyphenated.
  • Some speakers have trouble with nouns that end in -ful, puzzling, for example, between cupfuls and cupsful. This is a case in which common sense should probably advise against consulting M-W. Although the M-W entries for cupful, handful, and armful list the plurals cupfuls, handfuls, and armfuls first, they give cupsful, handsful, and armsful as alternative spellings. In addition, the spelling handfull is in there as an “also.” My American spellchecker does not countenance any of these alternatives. Cupsful doesn’t cut it because compound nouns are made up of two or more words that can be used on their own. For example, the words in the compound policeman can be used separately: “The man called for the police.” The element ful in cupful is not a word; it’s a suffix. Common sense tells me that cupsful is incorrect.
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