RE: Style question: "war dial" vs. "wardial" vs. "war-dial"

["Bill Greve" <BGreve -at- lynk-systems -dot- com>]

I think this is one of those words whose usage is morphing. You'll be
able to find authoritative sources for either. So as usually the case,
pick one and be consistent. "War dial" is probably more book correct;
however, if I had to guess, I'd suggest that "wardial" will become more
popular than "war dial." One, owing to its roots in "Wargame;" and two,
the popularity of warchalking and wardriving (which are less frequently
written as "war chalk" and "war drive.")

Slightly related, this link is a discussion about turning WAR into an
acronym (for chalk and drive) because of bad press related to
warchalking: http://www.warchalking.org/story/2002/10/23/234927/25

-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-techwr-l-133463 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
[mailto:bounce-techwr-l-133463 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com] On Behalf Of Rachael
Lininger
Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 9:36 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Style question: "war dial" vs. "wardial" vs. "war-dial"



I need to write a report on war dialing and I'm not sure what to call
it.

War dialing (however you spell it) is the ritual of calling all the
phone numbers in an exchange to see which answer with a modem. It's good
for either cracking into a network or for seeing if your network is
properly defended -- random modems are usually much easier to get into
than a company's firewall.

Google has about 1100 hits for "war dial"/"war-dial" and 800 hits for
"wardial." Unfortunately, however, some pages use different spellings
for the same form of the word. There doesn't appear to be a clear
progression, either -- it's not like some people are using "to war dial"
vs. "the wardial project." Though I've seen that, too. I kind of prefer
this use (it follows "to log in" vs. "login screen"), but I suspect this
may be weirdly nitpicky.

The @stake briefing uses "wardial" exclusively, but the references in
its bibliography again use both. I don't have my Sun style guide yet --
still waiting for the corporate credit card to come through so I can
order it -- and I doubt that would be in it, anyway.

Is there a standard usage, or should I just pick one?

Is there a style guide with information security terms?

Rachael