Troublesome words and two Alices

Lightbulb. Or is it light bulb? You’d think a metaphorical one would go off over my head when it comes to remembering if this is one word or two. No matter, back I go to Merriam-webster.com to once again look it up.

I know that I am a bear of little brain, but it’s particularly vexing that there are some words that never seem to find a place in what little brain I have so that I can remember if they’re one word, two words, or hyphenated. Top offenders are words such as panty hose, place mat, seat belt, town house, and soul mate; all seem like they’re begging to be one word, but they’re not—yet, anyway—while backseat, willpower, and chickpeas are and still look strange to me.

There’s little logic to the process: we have cellblock, but cell phone; cleanup, pickup, backup, hookup, even giddyup, but close-up, dress-up, and cover-up, (all nouns); collarbone and breastbone but shoulder blades; dish towel but dishrag; lipstick but lip gloss and lip liner; hair band but headband; icebreaker, ice pack, and ice-skating. I double-dare you to accept my double dare to x-ray yourself and then give me the X-rays. In-box and out-box are both hyphenated, but while I am now online writing this post, I shall soon go off-line and gain a hyphen in the process.

And don’t get me started on the coffee and tea words: coffee cup, coffee table, and coffee shop but coffeemaker and coffeehouse; teahouse, teacup, teapot, and teakettle but tea bag, tea table, and tea party.

Anyway, lightbulb, lightbulb, I shan’t forget it again…sort of like Alice remembering her own name. Here’s a picture of her in the forest where everyone who passes through forgets their names and identities, hence the shy fawn walking with her:

Which brings me to:

I just read a remarkable book, Still Alice by Lisa Genova. I wonder if the author had the above Alice’s experience in mind when she wrote this incredible book about a woman’s journey with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. The ending is more rosy than I expect it is for most patients, but it’s a book you can’t put down and that will stick with you, a must for anyone who enjoyed Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.

I’ve always said that it will be very hard for anyone to tell if I ever get Alzheimer’s. I get lost stepping out of a subway station and lose things all the time, would lose my own head if it wasn’t firmly attached. Okay, I admit it does float around a little… In fact, I’ve had the very curious experience lately of misplacing and searching for things, and then finding them put away in exactly the sort of place an organized person would have put them.

For instance, I found my CVS card in a little box with my other frequent shopper cards that can’t all fit into my wallet (damn these stupid cards, anyway), not thrown in my handbag or sitting in the dryer after being stuck in my jeans pocket and surviving a trip through both washer and dryer, and a referral from my doctor was filed with my medical stuff rather than buried in the mound where papers go to die on my desk/night table/top of file cabinet.

Maybe I have a sort of reverse Alzheimer’s, in which I start to actually be organized? And in the process, will I lose my current self who can’t find things or get anywhere on time because I’m thinking about irrelevant ephemera and writing about lightbulbs and hyphens?

Trendy Punctuation

I recently found myself in a familiar scenario: editing a book that was filled with em dashes. It made me remember a piece I’d written a few years ago:

Attack of the Mad Dashes

All was not well in Editorial Land. The em dashes were taking over. This seemingly innocuous piece of punctuation was having a field day amongst a multitude of submissions. No other punctuation stood a chance against them.

The dashes had skewered the semicolons. Clobbered the commas. Eradicated the ellipses. And were, in general, inserting themselves ad nauseum into poetry and prose that didn’t even need the extra punctuation.

“Nobody remembers me anymore,” whispered the ellipsis

“No wonder,” said the semicolon. “You always were so wishy-washy. On the other hand, I am an extremely relevant mark, and I’m going to waste. Writers rarely use me, even when I’m needed. The number of sentence fragments and comma splices is ridiculous.”

“Now don’t go insulting me,” said the comma. “I’m easy to understand, and, besides, you don’t need a ridiculous keyboard shortcut to type any of us.”

Back at the computer, one valiant editor was cracking under the relentless dash barrage. “Here’s a hyphen that’s obviously meant to be an em dash,” she said. “Here’s one story that must have a dash in every other sentence. Surely there must be another way to emphasize a word or phrase. Stop! Stop!”

But the dashes kept coming.

 

Not only are dashes still tres chic, but ellipses are no longer sitting in the corner and sighing over how no one remembers them. Dashes and ellipses are everywhere, while the colon and semicolon have been sent into semiretirement. The New York Times even ran a wonderful article on the semicolon called “Celebrating the Semicolon in a Most Unlikely Location.”

I think people like dashes and ellipses because they can be used in place of a comma, semicolon, or colon, and while they might not be the best choice, they’re usually not technically incorrect, either. They’re sort of like non-rule-based punctuation. Although many writers are apparently unable to understand the simple concept that the em dash is used to indicate an abrupt stop or interruption, while ellipses are for trailing speech or thoughts.

But don’t get me started on the en dash…. (Note use of four-point ellipsis for trailing thoughts that are a complete sentence.)

Oh, Those Brits!

I’ve been aware of the differences between British and American English from about the time I started reading. For some reason we had a number of British children’s books, mostly those written by E. Nesbit, when I was little. I remember being very indignant one time when my second-grade teacher marked “colour” and “favour” wrong on my spelling test. I knew those words were right, after all, I had seen them in books! You’d think the teacher would have had enough of a brain to say, Hmm, apparently this child has come across some British spellings! But apparently not.

Anyway, the latest book I was editing had to be Americanized. I have to say that I liked some of the Briticisms better than their American counterparts. Here are some of my favorites. Feel free to add to your vocabulary:

Alice band: headband
chat-up line: pickup line
chinwag: conversation
dustbin: garbage can
bobbly: those bally things that form on sweaters
bun fight: formal party (lots of women with hair in buns)
double-barrelled surname: hyphenated last name
made redundant: fired
winkle: draw out with effort

Yes, you have to hand it to the Brits for actually having a noun to describe sweater balls (for lack of an American term) or to coin “winkle,” referring to prying a winkle from its shell. And being “made redundant” sounds much less insulting than being “fired” (although you can also be “sacked”). I think it’s a shame that we don’t say “whilst” and have removed the s from forwards, backwards, and towards. However, I must admit I find “zits” more fitting than “spots.”

Trauma Teen

My daughter is sixteen, and she hates me. People tell me it’s just her age and she’ll get over it and come around, but it’s hard to believe at the moment. Everything I do is wrong. I actually expect her to pick up after herself, do something useful and productive once in a while, get out of bed before noon, don’t pick on her brother, who is five years younger and has so many more problems than she ever did, and actually earn her own money (gasp!) rather than bitch about all the things she doesn’t have, but it’s all a waste of time. I don’t know why I even bother breathing in air and formulating words and moving my mouth–what a waste of energy.

Lately I must admit my entire family is driving me nuts. I know living alone can be hard, but sometimes when everyone’s around, I must fight the desire to close my eyes and imagine myself far, far away.

I am listening to Chopin’s Nocturnes. How beautiful, how full of love and longing and tears. They seem like the songs of middle age, when you realize life is just getting through the days, surviving the disappointment, trying to grasp any bit of beauty you can because Death is hovering by your side, not taking you yet, but the time is drawing nearer.

I’ve also been reading Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” What a marvelous piece of writing. People are capable of great but also terrible things when they band together.

It reminds me of the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics, all those dancers moving as one organism. Interesting piece on the subject in the New York Times, about the difference between individualistic and collective societies.In China, a little girl is told she should be proud that her singing was used even though another little girl lip-synced to her voice because she was supposedly cuter and therefore more worthy of representing the motherland. Is this the direction of the future–the end of Western cultural dominance in favor of something else? It’s all very Borglike (i.e. Star Trek).

Perhaps we can feel less alone when we are part of collective, self-sacrificing whole.