To #space#, or not to #space#?

Devil's Advocate

Devil's Advocate

I lie. A lot. Honest!
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I was just thinking - probably one of the most common mistakes (which we frequently might fail to even recognise as one) is the misuse of #space# in certain words that combine, er, two words... Okay, I'm sure there's a word for this, but I'm blanking on it (no, it's not contraction).

Anyway, examples of the kind of words I'm talking about (and my thoughts on their proper use) are:

* noone/no one - should always be no one. 'Noone' looks like it might rhyme with 'moon'.
* someone/some one - unlike the previous, I think this should always be someone.
* anyone / any one - both can be correct, depending on context ("You're dumber than anyone in the room" / "Any one of these students would outsmart you")
* everyone / every one - similar to above
* everyday / every day - This one I'm not sure about. I personally tend to use the latter, but I think in some circumstances, 'everyday' is more appropriate, e.g. "That's an everyday occurrence."

I'm pretty sure others can explain it better (and in more technical terms) than me. I've actually long since forgotten the rules of English that I learned (or learnt? That's an interesting tangent...) back in my school days; I generally go by 'feel', in the sense that, I don't know the technical reason why 'Noone' is wrong, I can just sort of... tell. It just looks wrong to me, somehow.

I think it will be a help to us all if some of our more grammatically fine-tuned contributors can chime in with additional examples of words with/without #space#, and when/how to use them correctly.
 
I think there is a loose rule about the stress of the word dictating whether or not it can be combined. Some times you need to stress the adjective, sometimes, not so much.

*Every day the stress is on 'every.
*everyday it isn't

It works with more complcated noun/noun combos too like highschool, police man, flowerpot...all correct either way, but depending how you want the words stressed...

I'm sure there is a more eloquent and technical answer somewhere, but that's how I decide.
 
I tend to use "no-one" here and "no one" in my fiction. Don't ask me why, because I don't know.


As for the one you're not sure about, let's look at:
Every day, I see an everyday object.
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Every (and everday) are adjectives; day is a noun. EDIT: And as Tobytwo has now mentioned, "every day" is an adverbial.

You cannot have just an adjective at the start of that sentence, such as:
Rough, I see an everyday object.
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without changing the meaning, which in this case would probably be: "feeling a bit rough, etc." (but written in an informal, conversational manner**).

I imagine that the adjective, everyday, began life as every-day but has, over time***, been written without the hyphen.





** - Very informal and not appropriate for many POVs or narrators.

*** - Not overtime or over-time. :)

.
 
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BookStop said:
It works with more complcated noun/noun combos too like highschool, police man, flowerpot...all correct either way, but depending how you want the words stressed...
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I'm going to have to disagree with you, at least with these examples. I think those words will always be high school, policeman, and flower pot, respectively. I don't think you can go either way on those, but that's my opinion.

Perhaps someone (not some one) else can confirm...?
 
Devil's Advocate said:
I'm going to have to disagree with you, at least with these examples. I think those words will always be high school, policeman, and flower pot, respectively. I don't think you can go either way on those, but that's my opinion.

Perhaps someone (not some one) else can confirm...?
Click to expand...

I would agree that policeman should be written as such, while high school probably shouldn't be combined, although I'm not from the US and so don't know what the accepted usage is the area in which it's actually relevant. Flower pot, two words, definitely.
 
I would write "noone" as "no-one". "Nobody" usually works too.

"Everyday" is an adjective meaning "humdrum" or "unexceptional", while with a space it's an adverb means "on each day". "Someone" is virtually always one word. "Anyone" and "any one" have subtly different meanings, as you suggest.

"Anyone" means "anybody" or "a randomly selected (human) person". "Any one" means "any individual", implying that you will indicate a particular group from which the individual is selected.

"Police-man" seems strangely antiquated, while "police man" doesn't convey quite the same meaning for me. (What do hippies do if they see a spaceman? Park in it, man.) I would write "highschool" as two words, but I'm from the UK where that's not yet the usual term.
 
I would write highschool as one word simply because it is a combo that has been around for years, and the 'school' isn't really 'high' even though I'm sure the original intent was to describe the school as a high(er) school.

Everyday is another I would still change depending on useage...Every (single) day, I check the Chrons website. Although I must admit, if I wasn't thinking about it I could easily go either way.

I'm sure all compound words originated with the seperate words being used so often together that it made sense to hyphenate, and eventually overusage led to the hyphen's disappearence.

Other words to consider:

*underrated/ overrated
*manhandle
*firefighter
*raincoat
*out-fox
*none-the-less
*green-tea
*time-traveler

I would write them as they are.
 
I would always leave nonetheless as a single world, without any hyphenation at all. Green tea to me would warrant two separate words, while the example of 'firefighter' is a justification for the use of 'policeman'.
 
It all depends on the meaning you wish to convey.

Let us take anyone/any one.

In the compound form (anyone - compound just means it's been cut and shunted together), the stress is on the any, literally meaning any person, wheresoever they might be.

In the non compound form (any one) the stress is on the one and therefore refers to the immediate group of people under discussion.

So:-

Anyone can see that Manchester United are a bunch of overpaid nancy boys.
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In other words - any person anywhere could see that this is true.

By contrast:-

Peter, Devil's Advocate, Ursa and Stephen Palmer were listening to Hawkwind's seminal Space Ritual album. Any one could have got up and turned it off in order to save having to listen to the noodly fourteen hour dronefest of You Shouldn't Do That, but there were very good reasons why movement was for that moment, quite out of the question.
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In other word, any one of the four of us could have turned the music off, but no one else could have done.

Regards,

Peter
 
Yes, never 'alot.' It makes me irrationally angry! Heh heh!

The one I'm never sure about is 'any more.' I always write 'anymore' but always go back and correct it to any more.
 
BookStop said:
Other words to consider:

*underrated/ overrated Either this way, or with a hyphen, is fine for me
*manhandle Same as above
*firefighter I guess it's fine, but I would personally choose to hyphenate
*raincoat Agree
*out-fox Agree
*none-the-less Disagree; I would say it's always nonetheless
*green-tea I don't see any reason for the hyphen, it's fine as 'Green Tea'
*time-traveler Agree

I would write them as they are.
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My thoughts in bold.
 
My entomologist (who I have been training for thirty-five years to be as pedantic as myself, but despite great progress has not yet attained this summit) starts to froth at the mouth when American editors modify his usage of hyphens and spaces; and justifyably so, as a black fly, a black-fly and a blackfly are three different species (or possibly more). Just how far scientific precision should intrude into life, love and the pursuit of happiness is obviously personal choice, but for scientific tomes it is an absolute necessity.

Any More? (sister of Roger?)

If there are any more opinions, I will consider them; but I'm not going looking for them anymore.
 
The newspaper columnist James Kilpatrick, in a piece written some years ago, made a very good case for the combining of words. English, he noted, has a tradition of moving in the direction of togetherness. For example:

Yester day became yester-day became yesterday.

When in doubt, then, one can begin by typing the fully combined word, then seeing if the spellchecker tosses it out or not. This process, by the way, is the method I employed with the word spellchecker in the previous sentence.

Infallible? Nope. It's just a framework to employ. Dictionaries continue to be a necessity.
 
* everyday / every day - This one I'm not sure about. I personally tend to use the latter, but I think in some circumstances, 'everyday' is more appropriate, e.g. "That's an everyday occurrence."
Click to expand...

I agree, this is a special case because the word can be used in two different ways:


  • He bought a newspaper every day.
  • It was an everyday event.
 
Can I mention my revulsion/desire to do physical violence on the perpetrators of the form "alright" (or as I have winced at a couple of times, "alrite")?

So, opinions on the non-contracted forms of "can't", cannot and can not?
 
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