Greetings,

Today has been one of those days when I've sat and looked at the screen of my PC - and it has sat and looked back at me and neither of us have had a thing to say - a classic case of writer's block!

So, what to choose as the subject of this week's Tips? ... Maybe thumbing through my dog-eared Style Manual will suggest something ... Did you know that foreign words and phrases should be set in italics, unless they're regarded as being anglicised? No, I didn't think so.

For example, the term raison d'etre (you'll have to imagine the circumflex over the first e) - meaning the reason for something's existence - is italicised, but cuisine, ennui and gourmet are not.

Hmm ...

I suppose you knew that hyphens are used to join a prefix to a noun or adjective, as in pro-government and anti-nuclear, and to distinguish between pairs of words such as:

But did you realise that the reason you use a hyphen in words such as these: taxi-ing, pen-name, re-enter, co-operation and tail-light, is to avoid awkward juxtapositions of the same letters?

And I bet you didn't know that another use of the hyphen is in street names. So you can use Wisteria-avenue instead of Wisteria Avenue. However, you'll be pleased to know that this is no longer in common usage.

Hyphens are commonly used to show the close association of ideas: a long-felt want, a hard-working man.

They help to avoid ambiguity - in the previous example, the man could be hard-working without being a hard man. And in this example: a sweet-shop assistant is quite different from a sweet, shop assistant.

Compound words have their own little evolutionary pattern, moving from separation, through hyphenation to integration, as seen in tea pot, tea-pot and teapot. An interesting observation here is that while there's no set-in-stone rule governing the use of hyphens, there are differences in how they're used in different English-speaking countries: in Britain (and the colonies ...), the fashion is to leave the expressions as two separate words (joined with a hyphen to show the association - if it's a close one), while American writers favour single compound words e.g. arm chair in Britain, but armchair on the other side of the Atlantic.

Isn't that interesting?

What else is there?

Here we go ... if the abbreviation Esq. is used, it must immediately follow the person's name:

(I've actually seen some people refer to themselves as: Mr Henry Quill, Esq. which is over-kill in anyone's language!)

I feel I must also point out to you that the abbreviation Esq. is never coupled with Mrs (in case you were wondering). So it's not Henry Quill, Esq. and Mrs Quill, but plain old Mr and Mrs Quill.

1.APATHETIC, ardent, fervent, zealous

2. rigorous, stringent, SLACK, strict

3. renowned, OBSCURE, illustrious, eminent

4. diffident, timid, BRASH, bashful

5. artifice, guile, CANDOUR, stratagem

6. dogmatic, MODERATE, imperious, dictatorial

7. staid, sober, FRIVOLOUS, sedate

8.DESPISE, venerate, revere, cherish

9. impute, attribute, VINDICATE, ascribe

10.despondent, forlorn, ELATED, dejected

And well done Erika - the first to solve the puzzle last week. The letters T-E-R-A-L-B-A-Y form the word BETRAYAL.

Erika says she is something of a puzzle-addict and she has a great site where she reviews books, so with all that reading, it's no wonder she's a whizz with words!

One thing that distinguishes this book review site from most others on the web is the "Other Book Sites" page, where Erika adds annotated links to other good book-related resources on the web. New sites and reviews are added about every two weeks. You can subscribe to the site's newsletter, New Reviews, and have the new information delivered for free. Most of the books reviewed are fiction; many are thrillers and mysteries, but there are also reviews of other kinds of popular fiction, literature and non-fiction.

While I'm on the subject of book-related sites, here's another one I found last week: COFFEEHOUSE FOR WRITERS.

If you have a writing-related site of your own, let me know and I'll pass along the details. The more ideas we all have, the better.

Instead of a quiz this week, a word-building exercise (can't stop using those hyphens!).

Here's something I found while I was searching through my old notes - it's so old it's got whiskers on it, but ...

Socialism: you have two cows and give one to your neighbour

Communism: you have two cows; the government takes both and gives you the milk

Fascism: you have two cows; the government takes both and sells you the milk

Nazism: you have two cows; the government takes both and shoots you

Bureaucratism: you have two cows; the government takes both, shoots one, milks the other and throws the milk away

Capitalism: you have two cows; you sell one and buy a bull

OXYMORON OF THE WEEK: East Timor has been in the spotlight in recent weeks in this little corner of the world, so an oxymoron that has more than the usual bite to it: friendly fire

A Latin phrase for those bad hair days:

Quomodo cogis comas tuas sic videri? (How do you get your hair to do that?)

Regards,

Jennifer

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