This bugs the crap out of me any time I see the front page:
"THE ALL DEVOURING POP-CULTURE WIKI"
It should be "THE ALL-DEVOURING POP CULTURE WIKI" in order to say what is actually intended.
What "the all devouring pop-culture wiki" really says is that something called "all" is devouring a wiki that is itself pop culture. "All-devouring" is a compound adjective that would modify the wiki, but in "all devouring" the participle "devouring" modifies "all" – obviously not the intended idea. Additionally, a pop culture wiki is a wiki about pop culture, but a "pop-culture wiki" would be pop culture in its own right. I'll use another example to clarify the difference. A recipe for invisible ink would be an invisible ink recipe, but a recipe written in invisible ink would be an invisible-ink recipe. See how this works? The same rule is being ignored in both parts of the tagline: Compound adjectives are hyphenated. "All devouring" should be a compound adjective but is missing its hyphen, while the hyphen in "pop-culture" turns the wiki's topic into a compound adjective describing the wiki itself instead of its contents.
The hyphen isn't a terribly complicated punctuation mark, but I see it used (or, far more often, omitted) more and more senselessly by the year – doubtlessly a consequence of American education's frightful apathy toward even the most basic grammatical instruction. Please do not contribute to this abuse. It breaks my heart.
This bugs the crap out of me any time I see the front page:
"THE ALL DEVOURING POP-CULTURE WIKI"
It should be "THE ALL-DEVOURING POP CULTURE WIKI" in order to say what is actually intended.
What "the all devouring pop-culture wiki" really says is that something called "all" is devouring a wiki that is itself pop culture. "All-devouring" is a compound adjective that would modify the wiki, but in "all devouring" the participle "devouring" modifies "all" – obviously not the intended idea. Additionally, a pop culture wiki is a wiki about pop culture, but a "pop-culture wiki" would be pop culture in its own right. I'll use another example to clarify the difference. A recipe for invisible ink would be an invisible ink recipe, but a recipe written in invisible ink would be an invisible-ink recipe. See how this works? The same rule is being ignored in both parts of the tagline: Compound adjectives are hyphenated. "All devouring" should be a compound adjective but is missing its hyphen, while the hyphen in "pop-culture" turns the wiki's topic into a compound adjective describing the wiki itself instead of its contents.
The hyphen isn't a terribly complicated punctuation mark, but I see it used (or, far more often, omitted) more and more senselessly by the year – doubtlessly a consequence of American education's frightful apathy toward even the most basic grammatical instruction. Please do not contribute to this abuse. It breaks my heart.
Edited by Flimby on Nov 22nd 2018 at 2:18:09 AM