Bravo to The Associated Press for now proclaiming "website" instead of "Web site" as its preferred style (note to pedants: this is about style, not grammar).
I have long argued this was inevitable.
Yes, there are, and will be, holdouts. Maybe forever. (Right now: The New Yorker, New York Times, and a plethora of others insist on "Web site.") (As you all know, I can be stubborn about such things. I did not become a Serial Comma Commando for nothing!)
I have pushed for this change with particular clients I have worked with (yes, yes, yes, of course you can end a sentence with a preposition! Or even a proposition!).
The organic and natural evolution in American English is for compound forms to go from two words to hyphenated forms to solid, one-word configurations.
Be organic linguistically! Go organic!
After all, we don't use "tele-phone" anymore. We don't write "tele-vision." At least I don't.
Back in my linguistics course in 1968-69, I learned that such linguistic contraction is a mark of a language's sophistication.
Simplify.
Just as Thoreau said.
Zen masters too.
By the way, my friend Mark Murphy alerted me to a fantastic resource if you are into this sort of esoteric stuff:
OnlineStylebooks.com
Awesome. I salute its creator and maintainer.
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2 comments:
Headed straight over to this new website... ;p as my editing professor will likely be either already aware of it or glad to hear of it.
Many thanks
Scarlett & Viaggiatore
excellentay
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