Saturday, July 17, 2010

There's Only One Child Myth


What I'm pretty sure Time is talking about is "the only-child myth." A myth about only children, not the only myth about children.

(If anyone cites "the '-ly' rule" as an excuse for this ridiculous refusal to hyphenate, I'm going to, in the words of a certain Holly Hunter character, lose it.)

14 comments:

Karen said...

The best part of this is the post that was deleted. Thanks for the laugh!

Susan W. said...

I'm Team Slot all the way on that one.

James said...

The "-ly rule" wouldn't even apply because "only" in this case in an adjective, right? Besides the common-sense argument, of course.

Jim Grey said...

Your earlier try at posting this also showed up in my feed reader. Its title was lots funnier.

Anonymous said...

Aww, now I want to see the deleted post.

Anonymous said...

And in the same vein: "Needle free jab developed" from the July 19 Daily Telegraph (online).

Rose - Watching Waves said...

So much easier to keep track of just one myth, isn't it? All those other myths just got confusing.

Bill said...

Right, "-ly" is not the adverbial suffix there; "only" is not an adverb meaning "in an 'on' manner." But maybe it should be! I don't know how I beat Federer, but I was really on today. I was playing on-ly!

Andy Hollandbeck said...

It looks like, at the top, they got "High-Speed Rail" correct, and that's less likely to be misinterpreted than "The Only Child Myth."

I guess that makes this an editing myth-take?

Kenneth M. Walsh said...

I HEART deleted posts.

Qwerty said...

I actually read it the single-myth way at first glance.

khdent said...

Reminds me of a phrase I saw in the Financial Times years ago: "edible nut trader". I think they would know it needs a hyphen, but either they were using business jargon or they did it on purpose. I vote for the latter.

Eldo Barkhuizen said...

I heartily agree with you -- inserting the hyphen would have obliterated the confusion.

Tut, tut. One would have thought a heavy-weight magazine like TIME would have avoided such a clanger.

Great blog!

Kristina said...

What about the lack of a comma under "High Speed Rail"?