What's with all the hyphens anymore?

I Am Not A Big Fan Of Press Releases, Particularly From Institutions Of (Supposedly) Higher Learning, In Which The Writer Insists On Capitalizing The First Letter Of Almost Every Word. (Johnny Smith was named Academic First Team All-Conference after leading the Fightin' Maruspials to a share of the Conference Championship and a berth in The NCAA National Tournament First Round.)

 

At least we can all agree that the Oxford comma is extraneous and most often deployed by people unfamiliar with re-writing a sentence so that you never need one. Ya know, bad writers.

 

Who decided that AM/PM is acceptable. And phone numbers listed as 123.456.7890? They should be flogged.

 

I'm a digital content editor for a municipal website -- sexy -- and the calendar event creation unfortunately defaults to that. It's not an editable aspect of the content management system, so people are so used to it there that they make the mistake in copy. I correct it where I can and even have a style guide that everyone is supposed to adhere to. But we're working with union works who largely seek to due the bare minimum, which doesn't include adhering to AP style.

 

The guy is an editor at Random House. I agree with him.

 

You're entitled to be wrong.

BTW, Jackie Kennedy was an editor at Random House too. They ain't all Maxwell Perkins.

 

I don't get it. Put the comma in and avoid possible confusion. What's the problem?

 

I have seen fisticuffs nearly break out in a newsroom over the Oxford comma. Stylization of Wal-Mart as well. No word of a lie.

 

For the comma fight, was it a situation in which peanut butter and jelly was the end of a series?

Also, fuck Walmart | Wal-Mart | WalMart

 

Rewrite so it’s not an issue. The elimination of a comma is always a benefit

 

Oh, I don't know about that.

 

"That" should also be eliminated from most sentences.