COUNT AT YOUR OWN RISK

The-Doctor-Funny-Hyphen-Hustle

A writer discovers that the quickest path to 151 words is paved with dashes, loopholes and linguistic mischief

The easy way to dash off a winner. BTW, I haven’t looked that young in years. And when I did, my computer was an old manual Royal with Magic Margins. Illustration by Nano Banana.

A hundred and fifty-one words? What could be so tough about that? I can knock that out in a blink of my computer’s unblinking eye.

But I have questions. Lots of questions:

If I write a compound modifier, such as “well-written,” does that count as one word or two? They are connected by that little dash thing, you know. That makes them joined at the hip, so to speak — a Siamese adjective.

Sure enough, I checked with Word’s word-counter. One word. I’ve got this licked.

I’m now at 85 words. Halfway there. I guess if I get a little verbose, I could always change my opening salvo to “151.” That would buy me some wiggle room — even if it breaks all those English-class rules. (Hey, “English-class” is just a single word here, so put down your calculators).

In-fact-I-think-I’ll-just-write-the-rest-of-this-story-with-dashes. If-I-play-my-cards-right-I could-pen-the-Great-American-Novel-and-still-be-within-the-rules. Such-a-deal.

But what would be the fun in that?

Plenty-if-it-means-I-can-game-the-system. 151-on-the-nose.