Dear Charles,

I very much enjoy your site and am always happy if something I write attracts your attention. You blog guys are one of the great innovations of this war, and render even more mystifying the strange determination of The NY Times, Boston Globe, LA Times et al to keep their op-ed pages so inert and unreadable.

I am aghast to have discovered that, in denying Tom Friedman credit for Naked Air, I have misattributed it to Ken Layne rather than Jeff Jarvis – that’s what comes from relying on memory. Unfortunately, the mistake will be repeated in The Chicago Sun-Times tomorrow. I will correct it and credit Jeff in Monday’s National Post (though I don’t think they put it on the website until the Tuesday) and also in next Sunday’s Sun-Times.

You’re right, I did read your bit on Mineta. However, when I asked my assistant to track it down, she recalled it not as a radio piece but as a 60 Minutes interview by “the young guy” – ie, the one under 84. We couldn’t find the transcript in time, so I stuck with your indirect quote, from memory. That said, I take strong exception to your line: “Coincidence, or copy and paste? Notice the hyphen in ‘70-year old’.” We clapped-out print bores may be lazy, complacent and a week behind you fellows, but we’re punctilious style pedants. I’ve been eschewing the double-hyphen “70-year-old” for decades. I draw your attention to my column in The Independent (UK) of May 28th 1990:

“Meanwhile, back in Swindon, nine-year old Diana Dors was already set on becoming a Hollywood star with ‘a cream telephone and swimming pool’.”

Or October 22nd 1990:

“Even the News Of The World, with its penchant for three-year old Gazza strippagram exclusives, might draw the line at stories of that venerable antiquity.”

Or if you don’t want to go that far back, how about The National Post (Canada) of December 10th 2001:

“In 1998, after an awkward trip to their ancestral Ireland in which John trudged dutifully round the auld sod wearing his turban and white robes, Frank Lindh agreed to let his 17-year old son spend a year in Yemen, on the next stage of his ‘spiritual odyssey.’”

I always write “70-year old” single-hyphened. If ever it appears double-hyphened, it’s because of the copy editor or house style. For example, when the above passage appeared in The Sunday Telegraph (UK) on December 9th, “17-year old” became “17-year-old”. Nothing to do with me.

I think you’ll agree my proprietorial claim to the non-double hyphened formulation is extremely strong. Not only did I not plagiarise your non-double hyphen, but, if there was a Pulitzer for non-double hyphens, I’d have a roomful. I hope this can be settled out of court but I would remind you of the time Warner Brothers attempted to sue the Marx Brothers’ film “A Night In Casablanca” for plagiarising the title of the WB film “Casablanca”: Groucho responded with a counter-suit against Warner Brothers for plagiarising the word “Brothers”.

With best wishes,
17-year old Mark Steyn