We write “maybe” — but try breaking this jammed-together word in two: “may be”; doesn’t the meaning “it may be that …” come through more clearly and vividly? Try “any way” instead of “anyway”; or, more daringly, “all most” instead of “almost”, showing the tension, the indecision, between “all” and “most”.

David Foster Wallace, in his story “Everything is Green” has an interesting approach. The story, about a man and a woman, is told from the man’s POV, in indirect discourse. When the woman speaks, she says “everything”; but when he speaks, it is ‘”every thing”. And “can not”; and “her self”. This difference is one of the ways Wallace shows us how different the two characters are, how fragile their crumbling relationship is.

The credits for Jacques Tourneur’s noir film “Out of the Past” (1947)  include “Screen Play”. Isn’t this clearer, more necessary, than “Screenplay”?

(Sometimes, compounds break up without our help. In the original KJV Bible, for instance, “shalbe” is used for the later “shall be”.)

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