Please advise your underpaid Neanderthal — who was driving the green truck in the Palisades neighborhood of San Pedro on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 — that next time he mindlessly spills no less than forty pounds of mown grass and yard waste from my responsibly placed green bin all over the fucking sidewalk, curb, and street, forcing me to come out there and clean the mess up like some sort of shit-shoveling laborer from fucking seventeenth-century feudal Europe, it would would be proper for him to AT LEAST LEAVE A FUCKING NOTE OF APOLOGY.
Yours truly,
The guy you can probably find on the Street View of Google Maps out at the curb in his wife-beater and underwear tossing a bag of Sierra bottles into the blue bin.
Remember this one? I just stumbled across this classic from the Norwegian band a-ha, from 1985. I wasn’t a bona fide waver, but I remember being totally blown away by this video. Way ahead of its time, both mechanically and conceptually. The comic book metaphor, the alternate reality thing, the worlds-colliding love story, all of it. Created before digital tools; eventually taken to entirely new levels half a generation later with films like Waking Life and The Matrix.
Great stuff. Twenty-three years later, and the thing still holds up. Easily one of the coolest things ever to come out of MTV. Well, you know, that and this.
Many people find rules for writing compound verbs confusing and arbitrary. They end up guessing and producing inconsistent and confusing text that tends to lose the attention of their readers. Credibility is lost, and therefore the power of the message is depleted. Read on and look for examples that can help your writing today.
Compound verbs are usually hyphenated or solid.
to air-condition
to baby-sit
to color-code
to double-click
to dry-clean
to second-guess
to window-shop
to test-drive
to downgrade
to ghostwrite
to handpick
to proofread
to shortchange
to troubleshoot
to waterproof
to whitewash
NOTE: If you try to check the spelling of a compound-verb in a dictionary and do not find the verb listed, hyphenate the components.
Do not hyphenate verb phrases such as make up, slow down, tie in.
Please kiss and make up.
How will you tie in the winner’s remarks?
Don’t forget to slow down around curves.
If the infinitive form of a compound verb has a hyphen, retain the hyphen in other forms of the verb.
Would you like to air-condition your entire home?
The theater was not air-conditioned.
We need an air-conditioning expert.
You need to double-space all these reports.
That material should not be double-spaced.
BUT: Leave a double space between paragraphs. (No hyphen in double space as a compound noun.)
The gerund derived from a hyphenated compound verb requires no hyphen unless it is followed by an object.
Dry cleaning is the way to clean this blanket.
BUT: Dry-cleaning this sweater will not remove the spot.
Double spacing would make this table easy to read.
BUT: Double-spacing this table would make it easy to read.
Spot checking is all we can do.
BUT: In spot-checking the data, I found some embarrassing errors.
Source: The Gregg Reference Manual.
Comments Off
WHAT THE?
Jace D's World Wide Web Site is a completely mental product. It is made from pure lateral thought processes, distilled ideas, and 100% whole natural bits: past, present, and future.
ILLUSTRATOR WANTED
Writer of fiction with publishing connections seeks open-minded illustrator for serious projects aimed at blowing minds and changing worlds. =more=
(1) ACCORDING TO THE GENERAL CONSENSUS, WINDOWS USERS SHOULD NOT USE INTERNET EXPLORER DURING BROWSING BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF SOFTWARE DEFECTS. USE A GOOD BROWSER INSTEAD. (2) CONSUMPTION OF ONLINE MATERIAL IMPAIRS YOUR ABILITY TO KEEP FRIENDS OR OPERATE MACHINERY, AND MAY CAUSE HEALTH PROBLEMS.
