Gutbrain Records

Friday, 2006 March 31

Fun with punctuation. A favorite example is how Graham Greene left the world in turmoil after his death by adding a comma to a one-sentence document he signed on his deathbed. The addition of the comma made it unclear if only his authorized biographer were to be allowed access to his archive, or if the person named as his authorized biographer were to be his only authorized biographer. I remember reading something which suggested that Greene added this comma on purpose, for mischief's sake.

In case you're interested, the sentence before the comma was, "I Graham Greene grant permission to Norman Sherry, my Authorised Biographer, excluding any other to quote from my copyrighted material published or unpublished." Then Greene added the comma: "I Graham Greene grant permission to Norman Sherry, my Authorised Biographer, excluding any other, to quote from my copyrighted material published or unpublished."

This came to mind because of an article I read in The New York Times yesterday about same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decided that same-sex couples could legally marry in Massachusetts only if they are residents of Massachusetts or intend to become residents of Massachusettts.

This made Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney happy because he opposes same-sex marriage. The article in the Times made me happy because I support the use of the hyphen in "same-sex marriage".

The Chicago Manual of Style — or as a copy editor I know calls it, The Chicago Manual of Common Sense — states that "in general, a compound modifier comprising an adjective plus a noun and preceding the word or words it modifies should be hyphenated."

It gives as examples "deep-dish pizza" and "first-floor record store". It notes that a "mental-health official" is an official of mental health while a "mental health official" may be a health official who is really upset. It points out, though, that there are some compounds which "are completely unambiguous without the hyphen", "always seem to go together" and would "tend not to be misread". They give "physical therapy expert" as an example of this.

But back to Gov. Romney and same-sex marriage. I like the hyphen in same-sex marriage. One of the things I like about it is that this phrase is used a lot in the New York Times article, making the case for the hyphen so well that when Romney is described as a "gay marriage opponent", I immediately interpreted that to mean that Romney is gay and opposes all marriage, all the time, of anybody to anybody. What a grouch! That man needs a good husband.