Prompt Proofing Blog Post: Just a Word or Two
One of the more frequent questions that we are asked at Prompt Proofing has to do with certain compound words; should they be written as one word, two separate words or hyphenated?
VANCOUVER, BC, September 09, 2011 /24-7PressRelease/ -- One of the more frequent questions that we are asked at Prompt Proofing has to do with certain compound words; should they be written as one word, two separate words or hyphenated? Some of these - occasionally confusing - words fall quite definitely into one category or the other while others have had their form changed as the English language has evolved.
The Associated Press, for example, has recently changed its style guide to accept email, cellphone and smartphone as one word. There are too many examples for us to cite them all but we will try to cover a few of the ones which occur most frequently. Not surprisingly many of these are from the field of IT; words that, in fact, did not even exist twenty or thirty years ago.
One word:
- cellphone
- smartphone
- downtime
- downside
- downsize
- download
- upside
- upload
- online
- website
- dropout
- lifeguard
- lifeboat
- lifeline
- prehistoric
- premarital
- prenatal
- postnatal
- postdate
- postgraduate
- update
- upfront
- upload
- watercolour/watercolor
- watercraft
- webcam
Hyphenated:
- e-book
- e-commerce
- down-market
- full-time
- part-time
Two words:
- down payment
- life cycle
- water cycle
- life force
- life jacket
- life raft
- power wash
- no one
- tape measure
- tape recorder
- web browser
A few last reminders (call these pet peeves if you wish, they are so often used incorrectly):
- Internet is always capitalized
- website is all one word and is not capitalized
- non does not exist as a word in the English language; all words with non as a prefix are either hyphenated or written as one word - for those writing in American English, the one word option is a fairly safe default.
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Pat Wootton
Prompt Proofing
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Vancouver, BC
Canada
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