The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
serious crayons:
Elmore Leonard has inspired some great movies, including Get Shorty and Out of Sight. Also Jackie Brown, which I haven't seen but which my son insists is the best Tarantino movie -- better than Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, he says, if such a thing is possible.
And one of my all-time favorite TV series is based on Elmore Leonard: Justified, about a U.S. marshal in Harlan County, KY, a real place known for coal mines and crime.
I haven't read any Elmore Leonard, but I've heard he's good. The movies and TV based on his work mix suspense with laid-back humor.
Jeff Wrangler:
OK, I completely give up trying to understand The New Yorker's "rules" for capitalization and punctuation.
Here are two samples from the Aug. 25 article about the football coach Bill Belichick.
(Boldface mine)
"In 2013 Holliday became president of the newly created Bill Belichick Foundation, which supported youth-sports organizations."
"Belichick asked a member of the athletics-communications staff to include her in all his e-mail correspondence."
Those hyphens are absolutely not necessary.
serious crayons:
True, but according to my understanding a hyphen is not forbidden in that context, either -- it can be used for clarity but it's kind of a judgement call. The only time to absolutely omit a hyphen is when the first word ends in ly.
I might use it in the first example myself. In the second, the hyphen seems to almost make it less clear. I'm not sure I can explain the difference, even to myself! :laugh:
Jeff Wrangler:
I wouldn't in either case. Those hyphens strike me as rather old-fashioned and, well, New Yorker-ish. :laugh:
I think they're both open compound nouns used as adjectives and don't need to be hyphenated.
I don't have the hard-copy grammar sources that I had when I was still working, and I just spent maybe 20 minutes or so trying to find information online; I found lots of information on compound nouns but nothing that addressed a compound noun used as an adjective.
It's a judgment call.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on August 31, 2025, 03:56:13 pm ---It's a judgment call.
--- End quote ---
Agreed. Here's a Merriam-Webster entry that addresses the subject but leaves it kind of iffy.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/spelling-using-compound-words-guide
I tend to err on the side of hyphenating and wouldn't put them in the same category as stodgy New Yorkerisms like putting an umlaut over the second E in reelection.
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