Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2025 November 15

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November 15

English compounds

Does English ever use hyphen to separate parts of a closed compound noun, such as PDF-file, Arsenal–Tottenham-match, 5-1-win, Canada–United States-relations, EU-report, KVLY-TV-tower, The Book of Chemicals -book, 3D-glasses or SIM-card? In many other languages, this is normal way to use hyphen. --40bus (talk) 00:52, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

@40bus Those hyphens serve no purpose in English. I suppose one might be used if there would otherwise be some ambiguity. Shantavira|^{feed me} 09:18, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

Sometimes I wish that English used those hyphens a bit more. Open compounds, verbs spelled the same as nouns, dependent clauses that can sometimes start without any form of conjunction and no marking at the end of dependent clauses can make it hard to find the boundaries of constituents in English, causing an endless stream of garden-path sentences. German is far easier to parse. Compounds are written as one word, nouns are marked by capitalisation, verbs can be recognised by their suffixes and prefixes, the start of a dependent clause is marked by a conjunction and the end by a verb. PiusImpavidus (talk) 12:18, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

It could happen someday, as with base ball / base-ball / baseball, but it hasn't happened yet. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:20, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

I've often come across street names like "Church-street" or "Harris-road" in old sources, but they're completely obsolete now. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 16:14, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

Not sure if this is the right example, but email used to be spelt e-mail (with the hyphen) because it was a shortening of electronic mail. I'm guessing that was the case because ppl were lazy to type an extra symbol. JuniperChill (talk) 19:44, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

I remember spelling it that way. As with base-ball / baseball, it evolved into one word. I don't recall when I stopped spelling it with the hyphen, but it had to be about 20 years ago. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:12, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

I still spell it that way. The solid spelling looks too much to me like the obsolete email or French émail, both meaning "enamel". I also capitalize Internet; I guess I'm sort of obsolete myself. Deor (talk) 23:13, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

Many people regularly concatenate two-word expressions (at all > atall; a lot > alot; in case > incase; etc) presumably because it's easier than wasting their time on a space, or they genuinely believe it's correct that way. But then they go in the opposite direction and add apostrophes to plurals, which are contraindicated. Go figure. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:55, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

Pretty much the same when ppl say Monday's instead of Mondays (or viceversa). And i feel like common words (ie underconstruction, underreview, emergencyexit, firedoor, highspeedrail, heavygoodsvehicle should all be spelt that way. Its only harder to read because no one spels it that way but imagine of that was the norm. JuniperChill (talk) 20:10, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

Yes, but it's nonstandard. I have noticed (and grumbled at) phrases like in the long-term and two-years-old (defensible as an attributive adjective, but not predicative). —Tamfang (talk) 01:07, 23 November 2025 (UTC)