Day: May 28, 2008

Anthony Bourdain breaks his long silence to blog about his guest appearance last week on Top Chef, and I have to say he’s absolutely right.

In other news, I am ridiculously addicted to the show.

I wonder if it’s coincidence that just as I’m getting way too involved in these two posts about editors who behave “badly” and publicly air their correspondence with troublesome writers, that the only writer whom I’ve ever had serious trouble with — and who at this point is effectively banned from submitting again to Kaleidotrope — that writer gets in touch.

But I won’t actually mention that writer by name, nor repost the content of the comments that led to the ban. It’s just not something I feel comfortable doing — even if, after wading through the comments at the above two links, I’m still not convinced the behavior is always unjustified.

I will just say this: don’t argue with a rejection letter. Just don’t. Even if you’re convinced the editor in question is an idiot or worse, and that’s the only reason your story has been rejected. Because you know, even if you’re right, that’s not an argument you’re likely to win. Your story will stay rejected, and your chance of being accepted with another will all but vanish.

You know what I’ve been seeing a lot of recently? Hyphenated compounds with -ly adverbs. (Yeah, I know, probably not your first guess.) As in, “a fully-developed plan” or “their formerly-intractable armies.” I’m right in thinking this is wrong…um, right? I don’t have a lot of grammatical pet peeves — spelling “ridiculous” with an -e is usually one of them; so is that old Harry Potter staple “He said darkly” — but this has actually been bugging me lately.

I think it’s more because it’s briefly cast doubt on what I thought I knew about grammar, and less because it’s a particularly important or vital rule. I am, in fact, having a tough time — and so would welcome any examples you might have in the comments below — of specific cases where the meaning of a phrase would be different (and thereby rendered confusing) with the hypen than without. I mean, that’s ultimately the purpose of grammar: not to force us all to speak and write the same way, but to alleviate the confusion that often arises when we don’t.