Thursday, September 10, 2009

Your Gubmint At Work

I am developing a style guide for the documents we create at my company. In doing this, I and another Project Manager who is working on this with me are following some of the Government Printing Office (GPO) guidelines to incorporate into our manual.

Today, we discovered that the GPO style guide helpfully indicates that the word "werewolf" is one word. Which, as always, raises some questions in my mind:

1) What kind of grammar idiot has ever written that as two words?
2) How come I've never been staffed on a werewolf contract?
3) How many of my tax dollars went into researching whether or not that was hyphenated?
4) Really?

Howling at the lunacy,
Brutalism

12 comments:

Sean Scully said...

Where wolf?

There wolf!

Ri, the Music Savvy Mom said...

Okay, am I the only one who read this post and immediately thought of that chick in "Raising Arizona" who says "Gubmint do take a bite, don't she?..." (re: the paycheck)...and then mentally spliced that with the image of a werewolf..and cracked up?

Yeah, I am. Nevermind...

Brutalism said...

Oh, how I love Raising Arizona.

OneZenMom said...

Admit it - you really work at Warehouse 13, don't you?!?!

You know, it never even occurred to me to include the correct spelling of werewolf in our organization's style guide. Apparently, I'm slacking.

No. Wait. I just checked AP and they don't list it either. So I don't feel so bad.

Dilettard07 said...

Answers:

1) You have not met some of the government workers I have met, apparently. They are all 19th century holdovers, when conventions like "were-wolf," "cod-piece," and "disc-man" were the fashion. That or they are indeed idiots.

2) You eat too much garlic. Or wolfsbane. Or whatever those damnable creatures are afraid of.

3) Far fewer than mine that have gone to pay your salary while you blog, or yours that have gone to me while I comment on your blog.

4) Just in case. That, and to properly introduce Michael J. Fox to the Congressional committee he testified before. Needed to present his oeuvre to the members in detail, including an explanation of the movie Teen Wolf. GPO was all over it!

T1T2 said...

how sure are you that you are not a wolf?

Brutalism said...

Divine Miss M: I may be. Telltale signs of being a werewolf are: a unibrow, curved fingernails, low set ears and a swinging stride. (Or a swinger's stride...)

Tard: Blas-phemy! I have never blogged on government time. (Except for that brief stint in the big house, though I hardly see how that is relevant here.)

Brutalism said...

And ZenMom: AP is such an inferior style guide. Obviously.

Straight Guy said...

No wonder I got audited! Need to spell check those deductions next time.

FWIW, MTV just announced that they bought the rights to Teen Wolf and are developing a series. I am too old to know this, but I do.

The Absurdist said...

There castle!

Or should that be terecastle? This crazy language - I gust nevur no.

dilettante07 said...

I met one of the producers of Warehouse 13 this weekend. He is a douchebag...wait is that one or two words? Must consult the style manual.

The Absurdist said...

I would just follow the President's lead and call him a "jackass".

Oh, damn, there we are again. Hyphenated or not.

Crikey!