My spellchecker is driving me crazy regarding the following:

I prefer 'eachother' but it always corrects it to 'each other'.
Same with lunch hour, lunch time and similar words.
Also, words such as 'chatshow' should it be 'chatshow', 'chat show' or 'chat-show'??
Does anyone know what is correct, or doesn't it really matter?

Any comments appreciated.

Sammy

I always refer to a dictionary when spellchecker starts doing that. Try 'vantagepoint' if you really want to bake your noodle.

JB

Sammy, I have to say I've never, ever seen each otheras one word; I think any editor would think you'd simply made a mistake. 'each' doesn't fine-tune what kind of 'other' we're talking about in the same way that 'chat' fine-tunes 'show'.

Fowler suggests that you only use this kind of hyphen to join two words which together do one job in the sentence, which I think is a more general way of saying the same thing.

Lunch time I have seen as one word but it looks a bit lumpy with all those consonants in the middle, and hyphenated, lunch hour as lunch-hour, but not one word, perhaps because the two hhs would look odd - compare sword-dance and Ross-shire, says Fowler. Chat show's newish, and you could hyphenate, I'd have thought.

I don't think there's a general rule; you probably have to decide case by case Is your spellchecker (spell-checker? spell checker?) talking American English by any chance? The rules do seem to be different on different sides of the Atlantic.

Emma

Chat show is generally two words. Look in magazines for the usage.

JB

JB, is it only me who sometimes gets so bogged down in a problem that they fail to see the obvious answer?! Having said that, I was hoping there might just be some general rule I could remember.
I have no intention of looking at vantagepoint as my noodles are already a long way past al dente!

Emma, the concept here of one word tuning another is very helpful, I hadn't thought of it like that.
I've a feeling my spell checker is American...

Sammy

<Added>

I've just had to write 'bird table'....so, because 'bird' does finely tune 'table', theoretically I could write birdtable then? But, this looks clumsy, so possibly bird-table? So which is right? bird table or bird-table or both? Like JB says,probably best to try and find the answer in a magazine etc.

It is frustrating. Vantagepoint can never decide if it's vantagepoint or vantage point, and you get a green or red line under both. Of course, it is vantagepoint, but it goes to show that computers will never equal the trusty dictionary.

JB

The Oxf. Dict for Writers & Editors, which I keep nearly throwing away because it never answers my questions, does actually give:

'bird table' as two words, but interestingly, 'birdsong'

'vantage point' I would write as two separate words, I think.

Emma

I would say that 'bird table' is always 'bird table', like 'each other' I've never seen it written as one word.

I think 'lunchtime' is a single word, but 'lunch hour' is separate or possibly hyphenated (how would you spell lunch hour as a single word?).

Chat show is two words as far as I'm concerned, though I'd probably hyphenate if talking about a 'he's a chat-show host' as opposed to 'I saw him on a chat show'.

Jon

<Added>

Please sort out that last sentence for yourselves. I've got my own problems there with starting one sentence and ending another :)

O you're right about vantage point Emma. I wonder how I got that one wrong? It's a continuing headache, I tell thee!

JB

I don't mean to seem ungrateful, guys, but now I'm as confused as ever.

Sammy

probably hyphenate if talking about a 'he's a chat-show host' as opposed to 'I saw him on a chat show'.

Yes, I'm sure that's right - in fact Fowler says so I think - because 'chat show' has become a single adjective, as it were, describing 'host'.

That's probably where some of the confusion lies - the same words do or don't get hyphenated according to what their doing:

'Nanny wanted to live in' is different from 'Nanny wants live-in job' or 'Nannies live in Harpenden'

Emma


<Added>

Sammy, do you want to post a few of the troublesome sentences and collect opinions?

<Added>

I'm giving up on the Oxf Dict and buying Hart's Rules, which is the real bible for these things, because it gives examples, not just rules.

Thanks, Emma,
each other and lunch time were my most regular offenders, but now I am questioning several others...

no-one
a grown-up
fancy dress party
short-term

Sammy

<Added>

By the way, do you know Harpenden? I grew up there!

No, I'm afraid I picked Harpenden out of the air.

According to the Oxf Dic:

No-one should be no one
grown-up is always grown-up

The others aren't given (sigh!), but I would apply the is-it-one-adjective rule:

'a short-term solution', where the two words make one adjective between them, but 'in the short term we'll leave it,' where 'short' describes 'term' and 'they wore fancy dress to the party' where 'fancy' describes 'dress' but 'they went to a fancy-dress party' where the two words make one adjective

Just to confuse things more, that last example also illustratrates a different is-it-a-hyphen rule: you put one in to avoid ambiguity:

'a fancy dress party' could either be 'a fancy-dress party' with everyone coming as a pirate, or a 'fancy dress-party' which could just as well be an elaborate party with white tie and tails and not a costume in sight. So you hyphenate the two words which most go together

Clear as mud, huh?

Emma

I was just about to post the same findings (having previously been lazy with the dictionary because, as you've found Emma, often these words aren't in the dictionary) and I am SHOCKED, as a linguist, to find that all these years I have been writing no-one.
Your other points are VERY helpful and have given me some guidelines.

Unfortunately, as this thread progresses, I am having a lot more doubts about this whole area. But then maybe this is a good thing, as I will now be forced to check a lot more thoroughly and my writing should improve.

I'd be interested in anyone's ( or is that any one's - see, it's becoming an obsession!) opinion on how much this sort of think matters to a publisher - would errors like this put a professional off a manuscript?

Sammy

would errors like this put a professional off a manuscript?

Short answer, no. It's the kind of stuff that copy editors have tattooed on their souls in order that lesser mortals like us don't have to worry, yet still can look good in print.

Long answer, too many of such things and it might begin to look as if you just hadn't bothered to check - rather as a mispelling or two doesn't matter, lots make you look either ignorant or lazy or even illiterate. Apart from anything else, good copy editors are a)hard for even professional publishers to find and therefore b)expensive, so a publisher wants to save trouble and money if they can. But I think it would have to be really, really bad (and no one who hasn't waded in slush piles has any idea of just how bad that is) before it seriously put them off

(and I have to say I've cheerfully written no-one in my time, and I'm sure I've seen it all over the place).

Off to buy a copy of Hart's Rules...

Emma