Style guide topic - compound nouns.

[Pat Costello <Patrick Costello Sun COM>]

All, 

A really good discussion about the use of compound nouns for *bars, many thanks 
for all the useful input to the GNOME Style Guide team. Here are my thoughts on 
the subject: 

Compound Noun Discussion
========================

Question: Should compound nouns be open, hyphenated or solid, i.e. a single 
word? 

First, some points that were brought up in the discussion: 

- Single word compound nouns are non-standard English. False. See, for example: 
http://www.go-ed.com/english/grammar/nouns.html#compound. Also, all English 
language dictionaries are bursting with single word compound nouns. 

- Single word compound nouns are jargon. False. Compound nouns evolve naturally 
from two existing words, to hyphen-words, to onewords. This is a common 
linguistic feature in English. Jargon, on the other hand, is defined in the 
American Heritage Dictionary as "the specialized or technical language of a 
trade, profession, or group."

- Single word compound nouns are a question of British English vs American 
English, or other variants within the English language family. False. If a 
compound noun shows up as two words, hyphenated word, or as a solid word in the 
different locations, then all we are looking at is the word in a different stage 
of evolution in each location. In English, there is a trend for compound nouns 
to be written as a single word, "as soon as acceptance warrants their being 
considered permanent compounds", to quote the Chicago Manual of Style (14th 
Edition, 6.38). 

Next, the problem: 

The current GNOME interface, applets, applications and utilities exhibit 
mixed usage of the compound nouns in question, such as menu bar and menubar. 

Therefore, there is a need to standardize the approach for consistency, which 
will help the following people:

- Developers, who will know what to put into the UI each time. 
- Documentation writers, who will develop a consistent team approach. 
- End-users, who will not be confused by different presentations of the same 
concept. 

Finally, arguments in favor of the single word compound are as follows: 

- A single word compound noun reduces ambiguity for translators. 
- Some of the compound nouns in question already show common acceptance in the 
solid form. Others show enough frequency of use to show that they are already on 
the evolutionary track to the solid form. An Altavista search produced the 
following results: 

menubar 418,335 	vs 	menu bar 711,169
toolbar 1,140,032 	vs 	tool bar 92,753
statusbar 36,375 	vs 	status bar 80,956
scrollbar 1,285,780 	vs 	scroll bar 103,505
titlebar 125,830	vs 	title bar 218,098

If we just look at the above results as a snapshot, then we could be tempted to 
say that we will have menu bar, toolbar, status bar, scrollbar and title bar as 
our official terms. If we did this we would: 

- Ignore the proven evolutionary trends of compound nouns. 
- Introduce uncertainty for developers and writers
- Leave some ambiguity for translators. 

Conclusion:

- I vote for consistency in forming GNOME UI the class of *bar terms. Therefore, 
the terms should be of the one form, or the other, wherever possible. 

- Given what we know about the development of compound nouns, I'd vote for the 
solid form for *bar terms, when the term is in current usage in both open and 
solid form. However, there might be some *bar terms that might never be accepted 
in wide usage in the solid form, for example "location bar" and these terms 
would have to remain as excpetions. Nevertheless, we should strive for 
consistency as far as possible. 

There were some other points from the style guide feedback discussion that I'd 
like to answer separately, as they deal with different topics, such as use of 
American English and grammar terms. 

Regards, 

Pat