Monday, October 27, 2008

Newsweek Is-Weird

Look at the odd hyphenation in the following extract from this Newsweek article:

“It is eerily quiet at Barack Obama's headquarters, an open expanse that takes up the entire 11th floor of an office tower in Chicago's Loop. It's nearly as silent as a study hall, which is appropriate, since most of the 20- or 30-somethings in it wear jeans and T shirts.
...
Like FDR and Ronald Reagan, Obama is an innovator in organizing and communicating. Roosevelt was the first to rely on labor unions, and he talked intimately to voters through the then new medium of radio.”


What made them not hyphenate the two phrases screaming out for it, “T shirts” and “the then new medium&rdquo? I guess you could make a case for “T shirt”, but the other thing is just a mess. The then new medium? Really? The author later goes on to use “reaching-out” as a noun. Ick. In the same article, I also found Newsweek’s quaintly Victorian insistence on two periods in “Ph.D.” a little strange, but that’s a different matter-entirely.

No comments: