Noted

It seems nigh impossible to unlearn the punctuation rules we were schooled in. For example, inserting two spaces after a period is a relic of the typewriter, a convention used to avoid the “rivers” of white space created by monospaced fonts. But though this convention has long since been deprecated, I have found it to be a fool’s errand trying to help older writers unlearn the reflexive habit of punching the space bar twice after a full stop. Nonetheless, if only in my own writing and editing, I’m on a personal mission to overturn convention, to promote using the hyphen in a way that it correctly communicates what is intended.

Google’s meteoric rise to Web domination, near universal recognition, and canonization in the dictionary has been driven by their unparalleled execution of a simple function: returning the most relevant search results to Web users who are looking for love, car parts, or Jeopardy answers (I mean questions). It hasn’t hurt that they have buttressed their core competency with a host of […]