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By request, I’m switching the format of the files for this strip from three squares to one single rectangular image. You can’t tell the difference by looking. If you must know, I’d been doing the strip as three images on the idea that it would be readable for people using mobile devices — BlackBerrys and the like — to read my strip. And I’ve checked, it is more readable that way. I’ve also checked, and no one is reading the strip on a mobile device.
So now you know a little more about exactly what kind of geek I am.
[Update: I had to change all the three-image comics into one-comic images when I moved to ComicPress. So thank you to Dingo for asking me to do it; I would have had a lot more conversions to do had I not changed.]
Tony, is it “Blackberries” or “Blackberrys”? I see you say “Blackberrys”… is this current usage? Must I still hypenate “e-mail”? Enlighten me, oh linguigeek!
-You know who I am.
I chose the spelling “BlackBerrys” on the grounds that it’s a proper name, and a brand name, and thus exempt from regular spelling changes.
According to RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, the correct plural is “BlackBerry devices”… cop-out! Like when Sony said the plural should be “Walkman radios”.
Not sure what current usage is, but a trademarked name should never be altered. (I guess on that principal it would be better to say “BlackBerry devices”, since adding an “s” alters the name.)
No one will ever say “BlackBerry devices”. It is a cop-out. Your usage seems the best. But why the gratuitously capitalized B in BlackBerry?
It looks cool.
Can you resolve my problem with hyphenating e-mail?
Blah blah blah.
Re. BlackBerry: It’s how RIM spells it… and my company’s marketing department makes me correct copy on our own sites if there’s a posting that spells it “Blackberry”.
Email vs. e-mail… typically over time words that are hyphenated lose their hyphens: “yellow-jacket” becomes “yellowjacket”. I don’t know how long it’s supposed to take, and in addition, that refers to cases where two words are hyphenated, not a letter and a word. “T-note” will almost certainly no become “tnote”. on this logic, I prefer “e-mail”, but I’m not dogmatic about it. If the Chicago Manual of Style or the AP Stylebook says “email”, I could switch.
Meanwhile, my own company’s policy was, for a long time, “email”, and I had to correct it everywhere. Then we had a staff change in Marketing and currently we seem to be officially agnostic on the subject of e-mail hyphenation. Actually, I tend to type “email” because that’s what we were supposed to use, even though I think “e-mail” is more appropriate.
Incidentally, the AP Stylebook says “e-mail” is right. The Chicago Manual of Style doesn’t have an answer available for free on their web site.
Can I continue my personal effort to make the plural of “Egg McMuffin” into “Eggs McMuffin”?
On a similar note, I read recently a discussion of how the use of apostrophe in the McDonalds sandwich name “Big N’ Tasty” can only be interpreted as “Big No Tasty” (“Big AND Tasty” would have to be “Big ‘N’ Tasty”) So true. I love finding people as interested in punctuation as I am. Also – see Eric Zorn’s comments in the Sunday Trib about the apostrophe cafe… but oh, I digress, in anonymous commenture…