Fwd: Hyphens: Death-Knell. Or Death Knell (NY Times)

[Laurence Horn]

>From:    Laurence Urdang <urdang at SBCGLOBAL.NET>
>
>>In unresponsive reply to Barnhart's note, anymore seems to have
>>passed, unnoticed but by me, from being two words (and so pronounced
>>in my speech) to a single word, without a hyphenated transition.
>
>I feel like there's a difference between 'anymore' and 'any more', and
>there are times in my writing when i'm certain that one is right and the
>other is wrong--but it's a subtle thing, and i'm not certain of what's
>going on myself, i've just thought it's bizarre of myself in the past.
>(And, FWIW, i can use 'anymore' positively or negatively, so it's not that.)
>
There are certainly syntactic differences.  For me, for example:

I didn't eat any more (*anymore) of the raw liver.
I don't eat raw liver anymore (?any more).
I wouldn't eat raw liver, any more (*anymore) than I would eat raw kidneys.

LH

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