Sturgeon's Law

Because of my note below about hyphens (and the numerous responses) and the fact that I'm currently reading David Foster Wallace's essay on English usage masquerading as a review of some usage book or other, I thought I'd post the alleged rules of English grammar that I ignore as much as possible. I think in general I fall somewhere between Prescriptivist and Descriptivist on usage and grammar: I fight the good fight as long as I can on language evolution based on ignorance, but at some point I realize it's become standard usage and I give up correcting it, whether I'll use it or not. "Snuck" as the past tense of "sneak" is one I gave up on some time ago, for example. Many of these rules are taken straight from the AP Stylebook, which I find helpful yet occasionally loathesome.

13 Grammar Rules Up With Which I Will Not Put

1. The split infinitive: okay, this is an easy target. The reason for the rule is root languages where it's not possible to split infinitives, right? And there are certainly phrases where splitting the infinitive sounds preferable (and may have a more precisely accurate meaning) versus putting the offending word before or after the infinitive. Therefore, bad rule.
2. Don't capitalize prepositions or articles in the middle of titles: actually, the AP book agrees with me on this by saying you should capitalize such words that are four letters or more long, but I've seen guidebooks and titles that use the former rule. A long preposition like "Underneath" looks silly in lower case in a title.
3. Don't capitalize the second word in a compound/hyphenated word in a title: this looks as silly as the last one. I think AP agrees with me here too, though I didn't find it stated specifically.
4. Hyphens for any compound modifier: I think when the compound modifier is a common phrase and there's no potential for confusion, there's no need for the hyphen (this is one type I was cutting from my manuscript). For example, "well known author" doesn't need a hyphen between "well" and "known," but the AP book says it does. They even say "well known" needs a hyphen if it doesn't precede a noun. Nonsense.
5. Put a comma before any dialogue, as in "She said, 'Hello.'": How is "She said 'Hello'" worse? Commas are a huge can of little wormlike punctuations.
6. "Over" refers to spatial relationships, while "more than" refers to numerical relationships: bullshit. Play it by ear. Another one where AP gets it right. I'm over 21. I make over $40,000 a year. Etc.
7. If you use the word "significant" about a noun, the noun has to be significant of something (see, saying "significant x" is the same as saying "x signifies"): this one isn't in AP. This one caused me to lose points on a paper in college because my professor was a traditionalist fossil who remembered what it may have meant 60 years ago when he was in college rather than what it had meant the entire time I'd been alive. I'm not bitter.
8. "a.m." and "p.m.": The capitalization in this rule is inconsistent with Ph.D. and A.D. I'd be perfectly happy with AM, PM, PhD, and AD anyway.
9. Lowercase names for seasons: I held to this one for a while, but no more--it seems arbitrary and can cause confusion, especially "fall" and "spring."
10. An abbreviation and an acronym aren't the same thing: Slate actually had a correction on a recent article because the writer referred to something as an acronym but it didn't spell out a word so it was actually an abbreviation. Gasp! This distinction's long since been lost. Sorry.
11. Capitalization of religious terms ("messiah," "bible," etc.): F that.
12. Capitalize "Internet" and "Web": I still do it (especially when I write them on resumes), but they probably shouldn't be capitalized anymore. And "Web site" instead of "website" is stupid. Don't get me started on "World Wide Web."
13. Don't end a sentence with a preposition: the inspiration (along with Churchill) for the title. Some things sound much better ended with a preposition.

Next writing rant: a complaint about how appallingly bad most sportswriters are with words.