I saw this [Call hyphen Jim] last week on a sign advertising the services of a personal trainer.
Problem:
The hyphen is unnecessary.
Explanation:
Sign makers are notorious for putting apostrophes where they do not belong.
It seems that some sign makers are extending this bizarre habit to hyphens, too.
There is absolutely no reason to put a hyphen between the imperative verb “Call” and the person to be called (Jim).
Solution:
“Call Jim at …”
I saw this in a television commercial yesterday for Trend Barber College.
Problem:
The hyphen is in the wrong place.
Explanation:
The number “9” alone is used as an adjective to modify the noun “months” (which does not modify anything else), so no hyphen should exist between these two.
The speaker in the commercial did not use “barber” to modify “stylist”; instead, he used “barber” and “stylist” together as a single word to identify the profession.
So a hyphen between these two words would be warranted.
Solution:
“BECOME A BARBER-STYLIST IN 9 MONTHS”
I saw this in an April-23 article on the RCR Wireless News website.
Problems:
1. The verb is wrong.
2. A hyphen is missing.
Explanation:
The missing hyphen is a common English blunder, but a simple rule tells us that the hyphen is required in a particular part of this expression.
Here is the rule: When an adjective (e.g., “early”) and a noun (e.g., “termination”) together modify another noun (“fee”), there should be a hyphen to join the adjective to the first noun — to create a “compound” modifier, if you will, of the second noun.
I am not sure how common the other English blunder is: writing “wave” where “waive” — which means to forgo or give up — is required.
However, I believe that both problems are consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to write “wave” than to write “waive”; it is simpler to omit a hyphen than to include one.
For fun, I searched Google for each of the following phrases (with the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:
This tells me that Web authors have written the phrase correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of 59.2:1, which is heartening.
Solution:
“… Comcast will waive its early-termination fee …”