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Hyphen Hate? When Amazon went to war against punctuation

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Re: Hyphen Hate? When Amazon went to war against punctuation

#121

Post by spdustin »

cantankerous wrote: post #67
DanBC wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird that you call me Mr Know it all when i have already said that my grammar is terrible. You're missing the point - when a person is complaining about other people's misuse of grammar, and does so on a webpage that has "grammar matters" in big letters at the top, they really need to make sure that their grammar is not blatantly incorrect. Obvious errors discredit the point they're trying to make. See also Skitt's…

You're missing the point. The author is really talking about Amazon suppressing creativity in the written word. If you're going to take issue with the title, you should probably go with the "should be a title more in line with this theme". Clearly the title is hanging people up.

No, he is not talking about suppressing creativity at all. If he was, he wouldn't argue that his usage of hyphens was defensible as "correct" per the OED.

If it was a creative issue, he'd simply say "it is a stylistic choice, what else do you need from me to re-activate this ebook for sale?"

Re: Hyphen Hate? When Amazon went to war against punctuation

#122

Post by Dylan16807 »

Luc wrote: post #19
moomin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet somehow they didn't pull A Dance With Dragons, which had appalling hyphenation in the original release.

You're blaming them for giving different treatment to an author who's at least a million times more important to their business?

I would expect more scrutiny of blatant formatting mistakes in a high profile release.

Re: Hyphen Hate? When Amazon went to war against punctuation

#123

Post by ajkjk »

jgrahamc wrote: post #96
chimeracoder wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My point was that 3 of 4 uses of hyphens were wrong. Wrong according to whom? We're not talking about writers for a newspaper or magazine, where everyone is expected to adhere to a single style for the sake of uniformity. James Joyce did a number of things "wrong" both grammatically and stylistically, but that was part of the artistic expression. It's weird, to say the least, for a bookstore to enforce style. When…

The writer is no James Joyce.

His point entirely stands despite your carelessly dismissing one part of it.

Re: Hyphen Hate? When Amazon went to war against punctuation

#125

Post by notatoad »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #119
michaelt wrote: post #4

When there are discussions about Hachette, one often sees writers saying "Amazon gives me more of the cover price, and gets my book into people's hands faster, what's the downside?" I guess this is the downside.

Are you suggesting that Hachette has no standards and/or formatting rules for the books they publish? Surely not.

i think he's suggesting that Hachette has sane standards and formatting rules, instead of running your book against a dictionary and counting the hyphens.

Re: Hyphen Hate? When Amazon went to war against punctuation

#126

Post by whiddershins »

I, personally, do not want Amazon to make quality determinations regarding grammar and style for books they sell. It offends me philosophically and it seems horrible just from a practical point of view. I do understand this could be reasonable if, as some commenters wrote, this is a result of trying to combat poorly implemented digitization.

The rest of these comments discussing whether the original author is using hyphens correctly seem insane to me. Writers write as they write. Read it or don't read it. Enjoy it or hate it. Ask for a refund if you think it is sold in bad faith. But forcing a writer to change it is an unacceptable invasion of expression by the infrastructure. Any short term gain in increasing "quality" is subsumed by the potential weakening of the evolution of communication and art, which relies on creators taking liberties with conventional forms.

Re: Hyphen Hate? When Amazon went to war against punctuation

#128

Post by Turing_Machine »

notatoad wrote: post #125
Turing_Machine wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that Hachette has no standards and/or formatting rules for the books they publish? Surely not.

i think he's suggesting that Hachette has sane standards and formatting rules, instead of running your book against a dictionary and counting the hyphens.

And your evidence that's what Amazon is doing would be?

Re: Hyphen Hate? When Amazon went to war against punctuation

#130

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

scarygliders wrote: post #79
talideon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'red-head scarf' certainly isn't an acceptable use of a hyphen, unless the scarf is woven from the hair of a red-haired person.

I read that as "A scarf that red haired people wear"

That would be a legitimate way to parse that phrase, but it's far more likely that this is a typo for "red head-scarf". There isn't a particular kind of scarf worn by red-heads, AFIAK.
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