One word or two?
From WhyNotWiki
This page is about whether the correct spelling of verbs such as "set up" is "set up" or "setup"...
The purpose of this page is to help stop the increasingly widespread incorrect usage of verbs, spelling them as one word when they should actually be written as two.
[edit] Examples
| Incorrect | Correct (verb) | Correct (noun, adjective, etc.) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Click here to log in. | Your login has expired. | ||
| Sign up now | Your sign-up information. | ||
| Set up your | Your computer setup | ||
| Look up people's contact information. | A look-up feature [?] | ||
| Clean up that mess, young man! | The environmental cleanup project is going forward as planned. | ||
| We hope you will show up. | NA | ||
| I'm going to start up my computer. | The company is just a startup. | ||
| I'm going to shut down my computer. | Let me show you the proper shutdown procedure. | ||
| I'm going to power down my computer. | Let me show you the proper power-down procedure. | ||
| I still need to follow up on that. | I still need to do a followup. | ||
| Let me warm up first. | We're going to do some warmup exercises now. | ||
| First we need to lay out the different pieces. | This layout looks exceptional! | ||
| Fill in the information below. | NA | ||
| I need to pick up my truck from the mechanic tomorrow. | My pickup truck. | ||
| We'll just have to work around that limitation for now. | It's a workaround for the problem you've been experiencing. | ||
| I'll just climb up the ladder. | NA | ||
| Hurry up, or you'll be late! | NA | ||
| We still need to catch up to the people in front of us! | Today will be a catch-up day. | ||
| We broke up. | After the breakup... | ||
| I cry out to you for help. | NA | ||
| Let's go to the gym and work out! | We got quite a workout there! | ||
| As we close out this year... | They're having a closeout sale at Nordstrom's tomorrow. | ||
| As we reach out to others this year... | We participated in some community outreach. | ||
| The fire fighters ably put out the fire. | The output appeared on the screen. | ||
| Go to sleep. | NA | ||
| Not verbs | |||
| Now, on to other things. | Step onto the platform. | more examples with onto | |
| ... tools that may be utilized... | Maybe you should utilize some tools... | ||
[edit] What do the dictionaries / experts say?
...
[edit] The law of consistency (what does common sense say?)
Surely you must agree with some of the examples given above (you wouldn't write "Please fillin..." or "I'm going to warmup...", for example!). And if you agree with some of those examples, then I ask you to consider in what way the other examples are different.
I would suggest that they are not different—they are all simply [separable] verbs—and if you agree that any of them should be written as two words, then to be consistent you would have to concede that all of them should follow the same rule.
[edit] Examples supporting the two-word convention for verbs
Here I will amass a convincing collection of usage examples, preferably by respectable publishers and high-profile web sites, in the hopes that it might convince those who aren't yet so enlightened...
http://yadis.org/wiki/Yadis_FAQ.
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http://siege.org/projects/phpMyID/.
[...] Instead of giving a username and password to a login form, you just give it your URL. You're then directed to your "identity provider" to log in, and when it authenticates you, you go back to the site you were orignally [oops] trying to get into. Why this is good or bad, and what the actual implications of it are... well, that's all mostly outta scope as far as phpMyID is concerned. Suffice it to say, phpMyID acts as an "identity provider" so you can log in to OpenID enabled sites. [...]
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"Programming Ruby: The Programmatic Programmer's Guide", page 257: "Callbacks are very easy to set up."
"Programming Ruby: The Programmatic Programmer's Guide", page 257: "Notice how the TkCheckButton is set up; ..."
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# * Optionally define #setup and/or #teardown to set up and/or tear # down your common test fixture.
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[edit] Comparisons to other languages
In German, there are such (trennbar) verbs as these as well—many, many of them, in fact. And in German, there very strict and consistent rules about when the parts of the verb are separated and when they are not.
You would be considered very illiterate indeed, for example, if you were to write "Ich stimmezu" or "Ich zustimme" rather than "Ich stimme zu".
[edit] Examples supporting the one-word convention
In the interest of objectivity, I will also keep a collection of examples to support the other [leaning]. If you can find any examples at all, though, most of them are probably from relatively illiterate, lazy, uninformed, or inconsistent people, or people that just don't give much thought to such insignificant things as spelling and grammar... well, individuals, I should say, because "people" as a whole don't write things.
My hypothesis is that in most of the cases where one finds a two-word-verb-written-as-one-word mistake, there will be another spelling or grammatical mistake nearby. (Other mistakes, if any, will be highlighted in the examples given below.) In general, I believe that works containing two-word-verb-written-as-one-word mistakes will contain more spelling and grammatical mistakes overall; in other words, I believe there is a statistically significant correlation between those two statistics; in other words, the one is an indicator of the other; in other words, ... there are no other words.
An e-mail from Delta Flight Notifications...
Subject:
It's time to check-in
Body:
Ready to check-in for your next flight? Save time and check-in online.
[text box to enter passage] Lookup [button]
[Example of a case where [] are inadequate. It is used the first time to describe something that isn't there, that can't be represented sufficiently at all as plain text (a text box). It is used the second time to describe something that was converted to plain text but which is ambiguous and requires extra explanation (to point out that it is the text on a button, not simply plain text on the web page.]
http://www.google.com/corporate/
When you visit www.google.com [...], you'll be able to find information [...]; check stock quotes, maps, and news headlines; lookup phonebook listings for every city in the United States
Wow. Whoever wrote that (and I assume it was an individual who came up with that wording and not the corporation as a whole) must not have realized that the verb "look up" is two words rather than one.
Webrick:
[2007-05-04 07:55:24] INFO going to shutdown ...
http://www.dixite.com/docs/spposs/dixite-spposs-en-1_0.pdf
Section 3.4.4 lists tools, Integrated Development Environment (IDE), servers and middleware that maybe utilized while implementing in Java.
...
In case of change requests, other roles defined in section 2.1 maybe needed.
In case of change requests, other deliverables defined in section 2.2 maybe delivered.
Bugzilla is used to register and followup the client change requests and requested features.
http://cruisecontrolrb.thoughtworks.com
http://cruisecontrolrb.thoughtworks.com/
You can watch us setup a typical rails project
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CruiseControl.rb uses plugins to extend it’s core.
http://drnicwilliams.com/2007/06/01/8-steps-for-fixing-other-peoples-code/.
Open source software isn’t written by an army of coders, with a back up army of testers, documenters, and “Dummies Guide” book authors. Rather, its code that fixed the author’s problem; and they were nice enough to flesh it out generically so you could use it. Or they were seeking fame and glory....
If not, you’ll get version 0 when you do the checkout [correct] to tell you the project’s not hosted here.
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3. Checkout the source
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I personally use Google Groups for my projects – the project communities are all small enough such that its manageable.
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Make it really clear on your project website that patches are welcome and will be rewarded with free t-shirts and other complimentary items of stationary, and watch those patches roll in.
http://www.deadman.org/ssh-tut.html.
It's important to note that this file [~/.ssh/authrorized_keys] can contain many keys and that you don't want to overwrite it every time you setup 'agent on a new machine. The second method for transferring your public key, mentioned above, will not overwrite the file. One of the gotcha's of this process is the permissions on both the ~.ssh directory and the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file
[edit] http://www.splunk.com/
Actually, they're an example of a site that can't make its mind, a site that is inconsistent!
[Their main layout/header] (http://www.splunk.com/).
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[edit]
http://www.insidefacebook.com/2007/06/19/facespace-users-fight-back/.
I like to use Facebook for my personal networking over MySpace just like I do like Konnects over Ning. Their communities (http://www.konnects.com/communities) are focused on professional use not just another place for people to hangout. Please Facebook stay focused and listen to your fans.
[edit] Why are people so ignorant/confused about the correct spelling of these verbs?
(Or, Why do people write it as one word?)
I think a lot of the blame should go to content creators and tech people -- software developers, web site maintainers, ... -- because:
- They are the ones who label the log-in button as "login" instead of "log in", for example. So, since the users have to see and use systems with these spellings, they start to assume and believe that this is the correct spelling. They become accustomed to it and don't stop to ask whether that really is the correct spelling...
- Commands and filenames are often written as one word for reasons of practicality, size limits, expedience, convenience, laziness, etc. For example,
svn checkout. Even though the verb that that is executing is "check out this repository for me", the command you execute is "checkout". Since that's all people see -- and they type it on the command line over and over -- it is not too surprising that they should assume that's what the verb is too (even though it's not).
So I think a lot of it starts with technical people / content creators. Who then spread their misinformation via means of their products themselves, documentation, support forums, etc.
And then users get infected with the misinformation and help to perpetuate it. Until perhaps they themselves become developers / content creators someday and have an even more direct influence on the proliferation or anti-proliferation of that misinformation...
[edit] Article metadata
Aliases: Two words or one?
[edit] To make it more structured
- Put it in a table
- Each record has one example of each way?
- Allow filtering by first word or second word (how many words with "up"? set up, clean up, ...)
