Q. What style do you recommend for the words “health care,” two words or one? If two words are preferred, do you hyphenate it when it appears as an adjective, as in health-care company? Thanks.
A. For the answers to questions about word definitions and spellings, we recommend that you use a dictionary. Since Merriam-Webster lists “health care” (two words) first (“healthcare,” one word, is listed second, as an equal variant), we would choose that form. M-W also notes that the compound is “usually hyphenated when used attributively.”
Q. I work for a journal at a government agency. The departments and committees and journals within the agency all have varying
styles, especially for hyphenation and compounds, which resulted in the following really ugly title: Influenza Vaccination of Health-Care Personnel: Recommendations of the Healthcare Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC)
and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). It looked even worse in big, bold type. What should we have done?
A. Names of persons or departments or committees should not be changed in editing, and there’s no shame
in their inconsistency with text. In creating a title, however, folks should get their act together. Since the committee name
cannot be changed, Health-Care in the title should have been changed to Healthcare.
Q. I am a primary teacher. I am currently teaching about compound words and have discovered that I am making errors. Some words that I thought were compound are not. However, when I look them up in different sources or look at signs, they are written both as compounds and closed. Would you please tell me how I can find a list of compound words without looking up each word in the dictionary? Thank you.
A. Although an online searchable dictionary would be a good tool for this purpose, the study of compounds is an awfully advanced topic for primary schoolchildren. Adult writers and copy editors struggle with this issue; I doubt that seven-year-olds can handle it. Most compounds have more than one correct styling. As you’ve discovered, one dictionary will close up words, and another won’t. Even more confusing is that some compounds are hyphenated only when they serve as a modifying phrase. If you must discuss compounds and hyphenation, it would be better to teach your children how to use a dictionary. Show them that dictionaries disagree. Encourage them to use their own judgment in choosing, and then to be consistent. Older children can be taught to read a sentence for sense to see whether a compound benefits from a hyphen.
Q. I am editing a language arts textbook. The client wants to describe the activity of astronauts as “moonwalking.” As in, “When the moonwalk was completed, the astronauts were able to return to the lunar module, which would then reconnect with the command module.” Merriam-Webster’s only definition of the closed compound is the dance move made famous by Michael Jackson. Although they probably won’t let me change it, I’d like to know if my instincts are correct and this should read “moon walk.”
A. If you can't rephrase (“After their walk on the moon”), then I’m with you—otherwise, young readers might form a very funny image of what the astronauts were doing up there.
Q. I am editing a medical index using the “word-by-word” system, and having some trouble with hyphenated words. Some terms, like “non-ionic,” feature a hyphenated word that is not a compound word. Does “non-ionic” come before “nonclostridial?” Also, do hyphenated compound words like “arterial-gas” come before or after a non-hyphenated compound word like “arterial oxygen?” Thanks—this is giving me a headache!
A. Ignore the hyphen after a prefix when indexing. “Non-ionic” should be alphabetized as though it were “nonionic,” in the way that the hyphenated compound “new-fangled” comes between “newel” and “Newfoundland” in CMOS 16.61 in the “Word by Word” column. (Note, however, that Chicago style does not normally hyphenate prefixes, following Merriam-Webster, and would thus avoid that problem.) Hyphenated compounds come after all the open ones. (Again, see 16.61, where “new-fangled” comes after “new town,” etc.)
Q. With words such as “PowerPoint,” the capital letters are retained when the words
are melded. Is there a label for this category of words?
A. A word with a capital letter in the middle of it is said to have a “midcap”;
such a word itself can also, by means of synecdoche, be referred to as a midcap. The name seems especially apt, given that
corporations seem to be responsible for most such constructions. The word “midcap”
does double duty in Standard & Poor’s MidCap 400—in which “MidCap”
not only refers to a class of medium-sized companies but is itself a midcap.
Q. I am a consultant in the information systems industry. I am aware that the common utilization of technical tools has widely affected formal English grammar. One of the challenges I face when presenting my analysis to clients is the proper use of compounds. For example, “filesystem,” which I understand from research is not properly one word, but I see elsewhere that “hardware” and “software” are. I believe these latter are compounds simply by the fact of their commonality in day-to-day conversation. Am I simply waiting for the day that “file system” will be part of normal vernacular and blessed by CMOS to be “filesystems”? Can you clear up my confusion?
A. The compound “file system,” regardless of its growing application with computers, is a poor candidate for becoming a single word. Any efficacy in making it a single word in some technical settings is outweighed in everyday prose by the bad fit between the two words. Though it is not an easy matter to predict such things, compounds formed of two separate words must have something going for them if they hope to form an intimate relationship. One thing that helps is analogous antecedents. A perusal of a couple of dictionaries reveals that among compounds in which “file” is the first word, only “filefish” (a relative of the triggerfish) has become one word (though it remains “file-fish” in the OED; such hyphenation is more common in British than American English). By contrast, the preexistence of “hardware” (since the fifteenth century, according to Merriam-Webster) virtually guaranteed one-word status for “software” (which was born, according to M-W, the same year Madonna was). Words also must sound as if they belong together, which is why “website” works so well. Note that Microsoft, to its credit, seems to prefer “file system” in its documentation—even though, for example, specific procedures might invoke and require the syntax FileSystem or filesystem. Finally, a caveat: as our own preference for “copyeditor” has shown (M-W lists “copyedit” [v.] but “copy editor” [n.]), it is not always easy for a specialist community to impose its own usage on the rest of the world.
Q. I have an online content editor who says “mental health official” should be hyphenated:
e.g., “he placed three county mental-health officials on administrative leave.”
As a mental health professional, I say no. What say you?
A. In general, a compound modifier comprising an adjective plus a noun and preceding the word or words it modifies should be
hyphenated:
deep-dish pizza
first-floor record store
“Mental” is an adjective and “health”
is a noun. Without the hyphen, the phrase “mental health official” could be misread
as, to take one of several possible misreadings, a health official who is pretty mad or upset—as opposed
to the intended meaning of an official of mental health. But that’s a rather ridiculous and unlikely,
not to mention slang, misreading. There are a few compounds that, in addition to being ubiquitous as open compounds, always
seem to go together and are completely unambiguous in any position without the hyphen. Aside from “mental
health,” another example might be “physical therapy.” A
“physical therapy expert” would tend not to be misread as a skilled psychiatrist
who tends toward vigorous bodily movement. In sum, any compound modifier that is not traditionally hyphenated and would not
be misread may be left unhyphenated in any position.