Free time great time to make up new words

JUNE CASAGRANDE

I would like to make up a word now. That word is “slavelance.”

Slavelance is the opposite of freelance. Slavelance was the basis

on which I wrote this column for nearly a year. It went a little

something like this: Wake up. Drive 50 miles. File two newspaper

articles by 5 p.m. Drive home 50 miles. Repeat until Friday, at which

point add: Realize at 3 p.m. that I have only two hours to write a

funny grammar column. Panic. Turn in a column with embarrassing

mistakes. Drive home 50 miles. Write checks to pay bills.

Freelance goes something like this: Wake up if I feel like it.

Drive to Starbucks. Observe the power of made-up words such as

“frappucino” to get people hooked on morning milkshakes disguised as

coffee. Decide to make up my own word in hopes it will make me as

rich as the Starbucks corporation. Gab with friend over espresso and

scones about everything from pets to traffic to careers. Realize it’s

the day I have to write my grammar column. Ask friend what

writing/language topic she personally would find helpful. Settle on

writing about the comma. Go home. Look up comma use in

grammar-reference guides. Get frightened by the overwhelming number

of rules governing comma use. Write column on less frightening

subject. Repeat similar pattern until end of the month when it’s time

to pay bills. Panic.

Unlike the predictable drudgery of slavelance, freelance means

never knowing what you’ll be doing tomorrow. For example, last week I

got paid to come up with ideas for promoting the syndication of a

network TV show. (I’m not supposed to tell you which one.) This week,

I got paid to think up T-shirt slogans. (I bet you always wondered

who comes up with those unbelievably witty one-liners such as “I’m

with stupid.” Now you know.)

Today, I’m pondering the word freelance. The most striking thing

to me about the word is that every time I’ve sent out a resume for a

writing, proofreading or copy-editing job, the word “freelance” has

been the one typo on my resume (that I know of). You see, most

authorities insist it should be hyphenated. “Free-lance.”

“Free-lancer.” But almost everyone under the sun, including people

hiring contract writers and proofreaders, blatantly defy this rule.

So here’s my advice. If you want to be like me, make the bold

decision to go with the crowd. Send out countless resumes with the

word “freelance” in them and sit for months by the phone wondering

why it doesn’t ring. If you want to go by the book, add the hyphen,

then tell the guy interviewing you for the job that you’re smarter

than he is because he got it wrong in his job ad.

As I’ve written in the past, the question of whether to use a

hyphen often centers on whether you’re connecting two words to form a

single adjective: A money-losing work arrangement. But in some cases,

it’s a straightforward spelling issue. Moneymaking is one word only

because my dictionary says so. Knowing rules on when to hyphenate

something, when to make it one word and when to leave it as two words

won’t help you here. You have to know that moneymaking is just one

word. And now you do.

I’d bet my entire week’s income that moneymaking was once

hyphenated but through years of use was shortened to hyphenless form,

and eventually the dictionaries and other authorities just caved in.

We’ve seen the same pattern with on-line/online, e-mail/email and

many others. No doubt we’ll soon be able to add to that list

free-lance/freelance.

Being savvy to such etymological developments, I decided to

streamline the process for my newly made-up word. When the

dictionaries one day add the word “slavelance,” they’ll find that

I’ve already cut out the step of first writing it with a hyphen.

Thus, I’ve saved them the trouble of having to reprint their

dictionaries 100 years later to make it one word.

This is what happens to a human brain when it has too much

unstructured time.

Next week: the comma.

* JUNE CASAGRANDE is a freelance writer. She can be reached at

[email protected].