Friday, October 14, 2011

I Definitely Like Dictionaries Better Than the Internet


These images are from a Happy Place post titled "How to keep the grammatically challenged off the Internet." The link above has more images.

I think the post does a good job of pointing out many common spelling and grammatical errors; however, a couple of items from the post caught my attention.

The title of the post does not have proper capitalization. It should be "How to Keep the Grammatically-Challenged Off the Internet." See here.

Additionally, I find it interesting that whoever created the images chose to capitalize The Internet almost as if it is comparable to The Bible.

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Update: The adjective "grammatically-challenged" could be hyphenated because the two words serve as a single adjective that modifies a noun (albeit an implied noun, grammatically-challenged people); however the more relied upon style guides do not require/recommend this.


7 comments:

Jonathon said...

Actually, most style guides recommend against hyphenating -ly adverbs in compounds because there's essentially no chance of misreading.

Laura Payne said...

Jonathon - I am not familiar with style guides recommending against hyphenating -ly adverbs in compounds, though you are correct that it is not required. Thank you for pointing this out. I guess I was over punctuating that day.

Karen said...

I tried to leave a comment earlier, but it never showed up here. The Chicago Manual of Style (Chapter 7) specifically says NOT to use a hyphen in a compound adjective that consists of an adverb ending in -ly plus a predicate or adjective. Every book publisher I've ever worked for follows Chicago, so that's what I do.

Laura Payne said...

Karen- Thank you. I stand corrected and embarrassed.

David T. said...

Most style guides and dictionaries will verify that "Internet," when talking about the world wide web, should be capitalized. This distinguishes it from any old internet.

Laura Payne said...

David T. - I was actually referring to the capitalization of "The" preceding "Internet" when it is not sentence initial.

The Ridger, FCD said...

Spelling is not grammar. The "then/than" one is grammar, but "definately" is not a grammatical error.

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