Guide to Grammar and Style -- H
From the Guide to Grammar and Style by Jack Lynch.
Comments are welcome.
According to
traditionalists, hopefully means in a hopeful way,
not I hope. You'll keep them (and me) happy by avoiding
hopefully in formal writing;
use I hope, we hope, I would like, or, best
of all, leave it out altogether.
Some questions have no
"true" answers, only competing standards used in different
places. There are of course differences in spelling and punctuation in various countries,
but "house style" refers to the choices about (mostly minor)
matters that each publishing house sets on its own. Newspaper
publishers, for instance, often use different rules than book
publishers do. It's not a question of which is "right" or
"wrong"; learn to suit your mechanics to the forum for which
you're writing. See Apostrophe,
Capitalization, Citation, Commas, Dash,
Ellipses, Italics, Numbers, and Punctuation and Spaces.
Hypercorrection means being so concerned with getting the
grammar right that you get it wrong. For instance, we have it
drilled into our heads that "Me and him went to the game" is
wrong; it should be "He and I went to the game." Too many
people end up thinking "He and I" is therefore more proper, and
use it in inappropriate places, like "A message came for he and
I" -- it should be "A message came for him and me."
Whom is another frequent problem
for hypercorrectors; they have the sense that whom is more
correct than who, and use it improperly. See also Agreement.
A hyphen separates the two parts
of a compound word or the two elements of a range:
self-conscious; pp. 95-97. (Hard-core typography nerds will
point out that ranges of numbers are separated by an en-dash, but you
needn't worry about it: type a hyphen.) A compound noun used as an adjective is often hyphenated: a
present-tense verb. An exhaustive (not to say exhausting) list of
rules and examples appears in The Chicago Manual of Style.
Don't confuse a hyphen with a Dash, although
you should type a dash as two hyphens.