Q. We have a raging style debate in our office. Our online editor says videogame should be one word. This usage is already common on more tech-focused blogs, and he says it is more accurate, as the interactive video genre has become so much more than a type of “game.” AP says two words. What does CMOS say?
Q. I’m editing a manuscript that uses the terms over-commitment and under-commitment, sometimes in the same paragraph. The writers have hyphenated both terms. Does it look inconsistent to make the first term one word and the second term two words? Would it be less jarring to hyphenate both, as they have done? I’m fine with overcommitment as one word and under commitment as two, but I need some backing up so I can remove the unnecessary hyphens.
Q. If a writer presents a compound formed with a prefix that does not appear in Merriam-Webster, should it be hyphenated? Or is it OK to “create” a word by closing it up (if it doesn’t look too weird)? Of course I can’t think of any examples at the moment, but this comes up occasionally and I am often not sure how to proceed.
Q. Is login a verb or only a noun? I’m wondering because the following sentence seems wrong to me: “To login to your personal account, enter your user name and password.” Shouldn’t it say log in as two words rather than login?
Q. When I entered an incorrect password for your website, I received this message: “Invalid Log In.” Shouldn’t “log in” be “login” in this case?
Q. I haven’t paid much attention to style until recently when I had to begin doing some editing of copy again. Now I find that “copyeditor” is one word. What about people who edit books? Are they bookeditors? What about newspaper editors? Are they newspapereditors? Please justify. Thanks from Ice Age copy editor.
Q. There’s a club for people who’ve worked at my office for twenty-five or more years. It is called the Twenty-Five Year Club. I am wondering why they never added a hyphen between “five” and “year” and also if it’s okay to retain the capital letters for all the words that are hyphenated. I don’t want to rock the boat around here for a club that’s been in existence longer than all of us have been in the Publications Office. We are preparing the program for their annual dinner and latest round of inductees. Should we let them retain their old name? Has this come up in other places?
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.
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?
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.