Does anyone know the correct spelling for words suffixed with -full.
I keep thinking thankful and helpful, but what if it's prefixed with a noun?

eg:
Tank full of fish
or
Tank-full of fish

And she'll be tankful for any replies

(hides)

My understanding is that, if you add the suffix 'full' but attach it to the root word, eg 'skilful', 'faithful', 'mournful', it only has one 'l' at the end.

But if you add that suffix to the root word with a hyphen, it retains its double l, eg 'bucket-full', 'tram-full'.

Is that what you meant?

So does that mean I can write bucketful ?

My instinct would have been to hyphenate, but I've just checked in the dictionary and it gives 'bucketful'. So I suppose you can!

<Added>

However...I've just run the word through some English online dctionaries, and they don't recognize it. I therefore assume it's a word in transition - my dictionary is 30 years old. So maybe you'd better hypenate.

What do others think?

I'd always run it together without the hyphen and have a single 'l'. Even if it results in slightly illegitimate words.

A packetful of Smarties
A shedful of logs
A carful of junior footballers
A shirtful of warm skin

A shirt full of something (noun plus adjective) is quite different from the composite noun denoting quantity. It tells you there was lots of it - whole glorious expanses to slide your hands across. Like a fistful of dollars is a lot of money whereas a fist full of dollars is a hand that happens to be clutching some.

But I have no idea what I'm on about.

Rosy

Yes, whatever you do you want to differentiate between the phrase suggesting a car (that was) full and a car-load. Hence my suggestion of a hyphen. But it's an inexact science, I'm beginning to suspect.

What isn't right, though, is running the suffix into the main word but retaining the double l at the end.

Ah, thank you. I was wondering if adding 'ful' to the end was an Americanism.

I like your reasoning, Rosy. If I can get away with it, I'm inclined to go with 'ful' on the end of the noun.

<Added>

Oops, that should be 'I like your reasoning Rosy & Lammi...'

It might be that what it boils down to is how adventurous you are with language. Personally I would baulk at 'carful' because it just "looks wrong", and yet if you're a writer then of course you play around with language all the time. Plus, English is a language in a constant state of flux. So you have all these different tensions when you're writing. I would never type 'alright', even though it's now perfectly acceptable usage, because I'm quite conservative where language is concerned.

(Another aspect of all this is, if you're submitting the ms to an agent or editor for publication, someone along the route will sort it out for you if they consider it to be wrong.)

<Added>

I would never type 'alright' - I mean, I would use the old-fashioned 'all right'.

Ugh, me too, Kate - I HATE 'alright'! It looks ugly on the page, to me.

Rosy

Yes, I'm allergic to 'alright', to the extent that I sometimes find myself crossing out 'already'. Though of course sometimes that's right: 'Are you all ready to go?'

And I can't bear 'awhile' when it should be 'a while'

I'd agree that 'carful' is a)borderline for 'correct' but b)entirely clear and like many small jokes/games with language, rather fun. Bucketful seems to me fine, maybe because it's like a measure: add a pound of soap to a bucketful of water.

Emma

Agree with all that's been said so far. But to me 'carful' looks a typo for 'careful', which is another reason why it doesn't look right. I'd have to read a sentence with it in several times, probably, to get the meaning, and if I was reading a novel I'd get a bit annoyed at that.

Crikey! That should read 'looks like a typo for ...'.

Sod's law, isn't it, that when typing a sentence containing the word typo you go and make a typo.

Does anyone else still pronounce controversy with the stress on the first syllable, or am I ploughing a lonely and archaic furrow?

I put an equal stress on the first two syllables, then go 'downhill' for the last two.