Month: February 2009

“state-of-the art technology”

Hyphens

I saw this in a promotion.

Problem:
A hyphen is missing.

Explanation:
The promotion appeared in an FAQ for new lofts at the University of Houston.

Perhaps the promotion’s author should get my new hyphenation book!

The full sentence was “Included in your rent is the AT&T U-Verse 100 state-of-the art technology and it provides about 100 cable channels, including ABC, CBS, NBC, BET, CNN, CSPAN and many more. ” — with a space between “state-of-the” and “art”.

Because these two parts together modify the noun “technology”, the entire sequence of words — “state” plus “of” plus “the” plus “art” — should be hyphenated.

It makes no sense to talk about “art technology” that is “state-of-the”.

Solution:
“state-of-the-art technology”

“Moisturize”

Verbs

This verb bugs me.

What is wrong with using the verb “moisten” instead of “moisturize”?

Why must it be “Moisturize your face with Wet-o!”?

Why cannot it be “Moisten your face with Wet-o!”?

Perhaps some people who use “moisturize” like the “z” sound at the end of the verb.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following verbs (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “moisten” — 1,540,000 matches
  • “moisturize” — 1,520,000 matches

This tells me that “moisten” is 1.01 times as popular as “moisturize” on the Web.

The verb “moisten” dates back to the 1570s, whereas the verb “moisturize” dates back to World War II.

I have a hunch that the verb “moisturize” was coined by advertisers. If this hunch is true, then the Google search results show that advertisers within about sixty-five years have made “moisturize” almost as popular as a word that had a 370-year head start.

Hyphenation book now available!

General

Nineteen Common Mistakes that People Make with Hyphens, my new book about hyphenation, launched this morning.

And you can now get this $19.97 book at absolutely no charge!

I highly recommend that you read all about Nineteen Common Mistakes that People Make with Hyphens as soon as possible and make a quick decision about whether it is right for you.

Go here to read all about Nineteen Common Mistakes that People Make with Hyphens.

UPDATE: My How to Use Hyphens book is now available in paperback and ebook editions and has replaced the Nineteen Common Mistakes that People Make with Hyphens PDF. Learn more here!