emka
Junior Member
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2011
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- German
- Home Country
- Germany
- Current Location
- Germany
I have just noticed that, in another thread, I wrote "sub-category" and "subcategory" in one and the same post. Very sloppy. Of course I should have used consistent spelling in one document. Mea culpa.
Hyphenation is one area I have major trouble with. I don't know how to go about it, so I do it by gut feeling and usually only strive for consistency within one document. It is simply not practical to look up every compound word in dictionaries. Even if I do sometimes, I often find that both variants are listed.
But - is there any tendency? A trend to drop the hyphen? Or a trend to write compound nouns together?
Health care, health-care, healthcare?
(This is not about using a hyphen to mark which elements belong together when there are more than two, e.g. health-care staff or single-use health-care products).
A rule of thumb would really help me greatly.
Hyphenation is one area I have major trouble with. I don't know how to go about it, so I do it by gut feeling and usually only strive for consistency within one document. It is simply not practical to look up every compound word in dictionaries. Even if I do sometimes, I often find that both variants are listed.
But - is there any tendency? A trend to drop the hyphen? Or a trend to write compound nouns together?
Health care, health-care, healthcare?
(This is not about using a hyphen to mark which elements belong together when there are more than two, e.g. health-care staff or single-use health-care products).
A rule of thumb would really help me greatly.