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

Subject: Re: Style question: "war dial" vs. "wardial" vs. "war-dial"
From: Dick Margulis <margulis -at- fiam -dot- net>
To: Sean Hower <hokumhome -at- freehomepage -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2004 12:08:46 -0500



Sean Hower wrote:

I'd go with linguistic tendency and write it as one word and then, and here's the key, be consistent. :-)


Sean,

I agree with you, as long as we define the word _consistent_
intelligently. We don't want to encourage a foolish consistency.

Many expressions are a single word (perhaps originally a hyphenated
compound) when used as an adjective but remain two words when used as a
phrase. For example, "it will take a pasteup artist ten minutes to paste
up that page." Okay, not too many folks here are old enough to know what
a pasteup artist is, so let's try, "it will take a makeup artist three
hours to make up that actor." There, that's better. Or "onsite training
means you have to be on site."

So in this context, _consistency_ means that you use a given form
whenever the locution in question is performing a particular role in the
sentence. When it it performing a different role in the sentence, a
different form may be required.

Dick





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