The rules are: there ARE no rules!

Or: Hyphenating hyphenates.

Say you're dating someone online. You're having an e-mail-intensive relationship. Yeah, so, that double hyphen? How does that even work? Or does it?

I realize there's an Internet Age section or whatever in the Stylebook now, but I don't know whether it addresses the Awkward Double Hyphen Dilemma (haha ... ADHD!).

Just ordered a 2007 edition (referred to on the Web site as The Journalist's "Bible," and I'm not sure why "Bible" has to be in quotes).

For six months, I've been Stylebook-less. It feels like forgetting your wallet — you feel naked, exposed and very likely to misuse a dateline.

Don't ask, don't tell

Tomorrow night I am going to be eating dinner at a place whose Web site uses Comic Sans.

Other than that, I'm really looking forward to it.

Misunderestimations in speech

Today's topic is awkward moments in conversation where someone (and more than once it's been me) has no idea he or she is saying something incorrectly:

Exhibit A: I know someone who cannot pronounce the word vehemently. For some reason, he says vuh-HEMPT-lee. It's ... weird.

B: Anytime the phrase "for all intensive purposes" escapes someone's lips *

C: Sometimes I feel like half the people I know pronounce it supposeably.

D: And now for the self-deprecating portion of the program ...

Once in a budget meeting, in front of the publisher, I had to read the lede graf of a story about Viagra (which is embarrassing enough) which used the word impotent. I pronounced it "im-POE-tent," as in not potent. As in scent.

Needless to say, I had probably never used said word before, nor do I these days — but I know how to say it ever since this:

"Um," the publisher said, in front of the entire room. "Im-POE-tent?"

And then they all guffawed — a little too hard. Nothing like being openly mocked. That'll learn ya.

*Thanks to J-Dub

Press releases: Birthplace of grammar atrocities?

Dear all PR people,

Oh. My. God.

Love,
Sarah

P.S. Tell your coworkers to read my blog. K, love ya!

A memo from the Department of Homeland 'Duh'

Or: Overheard on my cell phone

Reporter: We've been swimming in Larry Craig coverage.
Other person: Oh yeah?
Reporter: Do you know who Larry Craig is?
Other person: Oh my God, don't insult me.

A discussion of S's

I used to make a thin argument about the reasoning behind what I am now calling The Apostrophe S-yndrome. My argument doesn't hold water, and now I am forced to conclude there is no truly solid explanation for why this happens.

My old argument was one based on the faulty assumption of inconsistency and can be captured in this sentence I just made up:

"If you are going to make greeting card's, you should definitely write Merry Christma's on the front."

If society's inclination is to, as Dave Barry famously said, use the letter 's' only to "alert the reader that an 's' is coming up at the end of the word," then why doesn't anyone misspell Merry Christma's ... or, like, dresse's? It's humorou's.

But I think where people get confused is the mistaken belief that everything plural is also the owner of something, or itself (see: Go Bronco's, magazine's for sale, tasty burrito's). I have come to see I am terrible at explaining why seeing a list of BEER'S on a menu is sickening (and it's not just because I hate beer).

The only thing I can think of is to yell, as a sports editor I know used to say, "Beer's WHAT?"

And they still don't get it.

(I spotted the above image while buying a concert ticket online last month. Maybe they should eliminate those lovely "convenience" charges and hire a copy editor.)