Magic with adjectives

Today I'm going to teach you how to make an ordinary, everyday phrase into an adjective. It'll be fun. I promise.

This super-amazing, magical power is used when a phrase is longer than one word but it's technically being used as an adjective. For example, let's pretend you're a grandma, and someone did something nice for you. You might write them a card to say thank you. Thank you is two words, so you may be concerned about attempting to make this an adjective because readers will be completely unaware that these words go together to describe the appropriate noun. Fear not. You can (and by can I mean you have to because grammar says) simply hyphenate the term.

In other words, you can write a thank-you card.

Now I know this seems a little odd, and you don't see it very often. You see it more commonly with numerical terms, like a three-mile run (ugh) or a quarter-inch cable. It's the same concept. If you don't hyphenate the terms, technically the adjectives there are mile and inch. You're not going for three one-mile runs. You're going for one three-mile run. See how much that hyphen simplified things? Similarly, Grace Potter doesn't have an inch cable that she's looking for a quarter of. She's asking for her quarter-inch cable.

And you, Grandma, are not writing a you card. You're writing a thank-you card.

Some of you sharp readers may have noticed I also hyphenated super-amazing. That's because it's important to note that the power to hyphenate adjectives is not just amazing. It's super-amazing. Yes, that means you should be doing that whenever you use the word super in that way.

I'm very sorry to introduce another brand-new rule you're now aware you're not following.

Myriad

Hey, guess what. You can all go back to using the word myriad as a noun. Some people recently decided that it was not a noun but an adjective, meaning you could only say something like:

The new year presented myriad opportunities.

But a quick look into the etiology of the word informs us that, in fact, the word was actually a noun first. So go ahead. Say a myriad of opportunities if you want. Turns out that we're all right. So just this once...

I wrote knowingly

For some reason the word knowingly drives me nuts. In general, any word ending in -ingly is irritating. It's already an adjective. Why must you make it an adverb? There have to be other adverbs in the English language. Pick one of those.

Anyway, knowingly is especially annoying to me, mostly because it usually means nothing.

"I like ice cream," I said.
"Ice cream is delicious," he replied knowingly.

It doesn't tell you anything about how he said it. Does it mean he was confident or smug? Those are descriptions. Knowing is not a descriptive description.

For some reason I become especially irritated by the phrase smiled knowingly. Any time I read something like she smiled knowingly, I want to punch her in the face, whether or not I know who she is or if it's even possible to punch her in the face.

There's nothing inherently wrong with it. It's just annoying.

A perspective client

Perspective: point of view (noun)
Prospective: potential (adjective)

You cannot have a perspective client. "Perspective" is not an adjective, and it does not make sense in this context. You can have a prospective client, and you can look at a situation from a client's perspective, but you cannot have a perspective client.

That is all.