With only one hyphen too many, this sentence on the Yahoo! front page isn’t really heavily punctuated; it’s just wrong:
A hyphen that joins an adverb ending in -LY (like heavily) with the adjective it modifies (like inked) is completely unnecessary. The -LY suffix is the signal to the reader that the adverb modifies the word that follows it.
In writing, mistakes don’t come cheap. The price you pay is your credibility and reputation. If you’re a writer for Yahoo! Movies, perhaps that’s not a priority for you; after all, you can make grammatical goofs all day long and still have a job:
The word cheap is both an adjective and an adverb. As an adverb, it’s generally used with verbs of buying and selling and follows the word it modifies. So, “talent didn’t come cheap” is correct, and the use of cheaply in that context is considered hypercorrection — the result of thinking you know so much about grammar that you make a fool of yourself in public.
This sentence doesn’t go so smoothly with its freakishly ungrammatical use of the adjective smooth:
The hyphen is suffering from a slow and painful death at the keyboards of the writers for the Yahoo! front page. Those folks have no idea when to use the little character, placing it after an adverb ending in LY:
That’s just wrong. The LY ending is the signal to the reader that the word is an adverb and therefore modifies the word that follows it.
Then there’s the case of the hyphens between a number and an abbreviated unit of measurement, which is wrong, too:
Hey, maybe they can take one of those hyphens and put it in record-setting?
This could signal the death of the hyphen. So many professional writers and editors have no idea when to use a hyphen. Maybe we should just give up on the little horizontal stripe.
Just take a look at the number of hyphenation abominations the folks for yahoo.com commit in a single day.
They don’t know that you never put a hyphen after an adverb ending in LY:
and here:
They love using a hyphen to divide a word (like skintight):
But they omit the hyphen in a word like off-guard:
and brand-new:
They forget a hyphen in a number-unit of measurement combination:
They just don’t know that you don’t include a hyphen in a number-unit of measurement combination when the unit of measure is abbreviated:
and here:
If these geniuses — who are paid real money to write — can’t use a hyphen correctly what chance do the rest of us have?
Punctuation continues to perplex the writers and editors who work on the Yahoo! front page. They just can’t figure out when to use a hyphen. Like here, where they omitted two of those pesky characters in what should be “19-year-old”:
Omitting the hyphens in an age is one of the top three hyphenation mistakes made by Yahoo! staffers. And while I’m on the subject, another frequent hyphenation abomination from Yahoo! is the inclusion of a hyphen after an adverb ending in LY:
Ah, the ol’ hyphen-after-an-adverb-ending-in-LY trick. Every once in a while (or as Yahoo! staffers would write “every once and a while“), it shows up on the Yahoo! front page:
The rule is: Don’t put a hyphen between an adverb ending in LY and the word it modifies.
Apparently using a hyphen correctly is old school. The folks at yahoo.com are leading the way with new and creative uses for that little line, adding it where it doesn’t belong, like here:
and here:
and here:
Perhaps they think a hyphen is necessary to join an adverb ending in LY to the word it modifies. It isn’t. The LY is enough of a signal to the reader that the adverb modifies the word that follows it.
Just some random stuff you’ll find on the Yahoo! front page, one of the most visited pages on the Web.
A hyphen has no place between an adverb ending in LY and the word it modifies:
There’s either a word missing or an unnecessary word here:
Finally, there’s definitely a missing word here, unless you right in pidgin English:
Gawd, it must be humiliating to try to be grammatically correct to the point of sounding pretentious, only to find out you’ve committed a grammatical goof. You silly goose! The tennis player could feel badly if he had oven mitts on his hands.
The good editors who work on the Yahoo! front page could use a little lesson on linking verbs. Those are verbs that express emotion or a state of being, and not an action. Some verbs like feel and smell can function as either a linking verb or an action verb. You don’t use an adverb (like badly) to modify a verb like feel when it’s used as a linking verb.
