This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Me.

That’s why, in retirement, I had nothing better to do the other day than read a column by Benjamin Dreyer that appeared in the Washington Post.

I wish I had his job.

He is Random House’s executive managing editor and copy chief and the author of “Dreyer’s English:  An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style.”

I like words (better than numbers), so his job would have been a great one for me.

Here is how Dreyer started his column:

“The Washington Post’s style-meisters a few months ago quietly re-styled the name of what is bringing you these words, from the ‘Internet’ to the ‘internet.’  I hope my hosts here will forgive me, but the switch, made long after many other publications had gone lowercase, put me in mind of Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese intelligence officer who, disbelieving that World War II had wrapped up in 1945, continued to stalk the Philippines for another 29 years before, finally, facing and accepting reality and surrendering.”

Word-style folk like Dreyer tend to lean toward what he calls “the Onoda-ish:  Mistrustful of change, never quite wanting, in the face of orthographic evolution, to be the last one to lay down their arms, but certainly never wanting to be the first, either.”

Dreyer remembers how, when fresh copies of the 10^th edition of Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary came out in 1993, he riffed through the pages to find out whether words had changed.  He found at least one:   The words “light bulb,” as they were in the 1983 ninth edition, acknowledged modern life and became “light-bulb”? 

And he also remembers the 11^th edition when the word “light-bulb” became “lightbulb.”

Other changes include not capitalizing the word “internet” or changing the word e-mail to email.

See, this is big stuff in the words business!

Well, in response, sort of, to Dreyer, here are my hot buttons of language and its usage:

• I like to use hyphens such as in the word “bi-partisan,” which is in common usage today, though not so much in action in places like Congress.  If you don’t use the hyphen, the uninitiated could pronounce the word like this – “bip…artisan.”  Or, consider the word “on-line.”  Better with a hyphen.
• I like to use capitalization when I think it is indicated, such as in the word “administration” when applied, for example, to the Biden Administration.  Makes sense to me given the importance of those who work for any president.  Or, in Oregon, the word “Legislature” to describe the 90 lawmakers who meet in Salem every year.  Again, agree or disagree with them, they carry an important job, deserving capitalization.
• I like to use commas because, I believe, they aid in readability.
• According to Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon, the dispute over the FBI’s search of former president Donald Trump’s property at Mar-a-Lago highlights a flaw in our public discourse that has real and negative consequences:  The widespread use of the term “political” when what is really meant is “partisan.”  Agreed.  Good point.  Opponents of the search are being partisan, not political.
• And, in an example I have used before in previous blogs on words, I dislike “ize” words, such as, for example, prioritize.  Better to say, simply, “what’s more important than something else,” not prioritize.

Finally, this from Dreyer:

“These days, I find, language seeks its own pace.  Coinages pop up, introduce themselves and re-style themselves as they see fit.  And on-line dictionaries do their impressively nimble best to keep up, as we all do.  A few years ago, a lexicographer friend reminded me that the dictionary doesn’t dictate language but reflects it, and that, if the people inventing and writing and guiding the language didn’t do their jobs properly — pushing and dragging things forward as we see fit — then the dictionary can’t do its job.”

So, language is nothing if not alive and changing – or, if you prefer, growing.

I remember the times when a partner of mine in our lobbying and public relations business told me, as a journalist (at least a former one), that the best example of good writing was “the Associated Press stylebook.”  He lived and died by it.

I didn’t.  I took it as one viewpoint, perhaps good for journalists, but only advisory for others.  And, if I found a better way to use words in my post-journalism life – with hyphens, with capitalization, with commas, and without “ize” letters – so be it. 

After all, I am free actor who likes words that communicate.