Cookie Monster Grammar

   COOKIE KOOKS -- It's time to put an end to the widespread use of objective pronouns (me and him) as the subject of sentences (I and he). And while we're at it, go back to the courtesy of putting the other person first. Example: "Me and him went to the store." It's  Cookie Monster Grammar, and even the denizens of Sesame Street know the difference. Unfortunately, when they enter teenagerhood, they revert. No cookies for the delinquents.
   HYPHEN HAPPY -- It's time for a refresher course in the difference between multiple adjectives and compount modifiers. A noun can have an infinite number of adjectives, none of which need hyphens. Example: The phrase "large round green apple" has three words describing the nature of a certain fruit. Hyphens are only needed when there may be some doubt as to whether the first modifier applies to the second modifier or to the main noun. Example: First-born son. Failure to follow these guidelines results in a crop of hyphens that are distracting to the eye of the reader, and thereby interfere with the act of reading. The Samurai Rim Man found this fault in a paper by the American Enterprise Institute, which perpetrated the offense several times, as in: public-debt-to-GDP ratio, public-debt limits, public-debt levels, housing-market bubbles. There is no doubt that the several adjectives all modify the main noun, and not each other. Therefore, hyphens are not needed.
   PARALLEL  PROBLEM -- The Philly news anchor reported that "98 percent of women washed their hands before leaving public restrooms, but one out of three men did not." An hour later, the network's Brian Williams said, "98 percent of women washed their hands ... but for men that number dropped to 77 percent." The local reporter not only mixed a percentage figure with a ratio, forcing the viewer-listerner to do an unnecessary mental calculation, but he was also wrong. The one out of three who did not translates to 66 percent who did, not 77 percent.