Spacing Out: Goodbye Cell Phone, Hello Cellphone

By Eve Powell Orio

Say goodbye to the hyphen. And while you’re at it, it’s sayonara to the space, too, because they were both officially deemed passé by the AP Style Book when it proclaimed last week that “cell phone,” “e-mail” and “smart phone” have been “changed to cellphone, email and smartphone to reflect increasingly common usage.”

As an official word nerd, this is the stuff I live for! Back in my days as senior manager of content development at Mattel Digital Network, what got me through the week was the regular Friday meeting with my team. We could easily spend the entire hour discussing precisely these issues without interruption by those who couldn’t care less whether the period goes inside the quotes (it does). I loved every minute.

Sadly, most people do fall into the “couldn’t care less” category. But without proper punctuation (as well as spelling and grammar), how can you be sure you’ve interpreted a sentence correctly? It’s particularly important in business where misinterpretation of emails is by far the biggest cause of inter-cubicle warfare.

So how do I feel about the loss of the hyphen in “e-mail” and the space in “cellphone?” I’m all for “email” because it’s short ‘n sweet. Cellphone, on the other hand, looks crammed because there are so many letters. In the end, though, I’ll go with the accepted usage because it’s the content manager’s job to ensure the clearest possible communication.

As I’ve been typing this blog, I’ve had to add these newly amalgamated words to my computer dictionary. Will they be included in the next release of Word? I don’t know butIcan’twaittosee!

What do you think about email, cellphone and smartphone? Do you care? Do you think it matters? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Act 1, Scene 1

By Guido Orio

Lately, I’ve had the good fortune to hook up with a great group of production people here in Portland. Some of them are just finishing film school and along with making me feel old, it’s taking me back to my beginnings in this business.

I’ve always loved movies. Really, anything that was a moving picture of any kind interested me. So much that even as a kid I would watch the commercials as intently as I did the show. It all came into focus (bad pun, I know!) when I discovered film production in a class called “Film Analysis” that, oddly enough, fell under the English curriculum. At first I thought it would be a cool hobby and it didn’t even occur to me to make a career out of it. Until one day I joined a college field trip to a major post-production house in Hollywood. We saw seasoned editors working diligently on TV sitcoms, weekly shows, and music videos. We toured edit suites and departments like effects, music, audio sweetening and titling. Everyone was doing their individual part to create visual stories that would entertain millions of viewers. I was hooked.

So I got my college degree and went straight to Hollywood. I began knocking on doors, waving my college TV and film degree (which was called Telecommunications back then). The first thing people wanted to know was what kind of experience I had.  Of course, I was so proud of my college project accomplishments that I enthusiastically talked them up. This impressed nobody and those doors slamming in my face were a rude awakening. Experience. I needed experience.

I heard about a low budget film that was being produced and interviewed with the production manager. I said I had little experience but I’m a team player and would love an opportunity just to work with them. Lucky for me, he liked what I had to say and I was in. I finally got my break! That was the plus side. The down side was that it was for no pay. I worked for a month on that film without seeing one single dime. Even so, I would do it again in a heartbeat. I was on the grip/electric crew and the gaffer who oversaw it had been the gaffer on several Ridley Scott films. The tricks of the trade I learned from him are tricks I still use today.

I’m excited to watch my new friends write the opening scenes for their own careers. It’ll be great to see where their futures take them because the sky’s the limit.

And … action!