I was looking for a coupon yesterday and came across the following in the Borders Rewards email I received on July 15:

"Brady Bledsoe is truly an all-American: a straight-laced star quarterback who's honoring his promise to his mother to remain celibate in college."



I know that dictionaries list "straightlaced" as a variant of straitlaced, but I'm fairly certain that the latter is correct and that neither is hyphenated. The best I could do as a reference for this, though, is here: http://www.bartleby.com/68/56/5756.html

Can anyone direct me to a better citation?

How about the capitalization of "all-American?" The NCAA, at least, seems to capitalize the first A and they ought to know. \:\)

When Borders was just a store in Ann Arbor, they used to give job applicants a written test and required that they demonstrate familiarity with broad areas of literature and a specialization in at least one. I don't suppose they do that since the company was acquired, do they? I guess it's also unlikely that that email was written by a retail employee.

Last edited by duncan7; 07/21/2008 1:17 PM. Reason: Inserted graphic