Re: Word-a-Day preview round

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On 23 Apr 2008, at 18:59, Shaun McCance wrote:

> There are a number of -bar and -box terms where there's
> disagreement on whether they should be one word or two.
> Rather than have separate debates for each term, let's
> just take a look at a few all at once.  I'm not making
> any recommendations at this point.  I'm just soliciting
> opinions.

Ah yes, I remember Pat Costello getting quite animated about these  
ones when the original terms were chosen :)

> check box (Gnome, Microsoft)
> checkbox (Apple)

"Checkbox" seems to be more commonly used, at least if you believe  
Google's hit counts.  I also slightly favour it because "check the  
checkbox" looks slightly less awkward than "check the check box".
(Assuming we're going to use "check" as the verb, which is slightly  
contentious in itself as nobody over here "checks" boxes, they "tick"  
them...)

> menu bar (Apple)
> menubar (Gnome)
>
> status bar (Microsoft)
> statusbar (Gnome)
>
> title bar (Apple, Microsoft)
> titlebar (Gnome)
>
> tool bar
> toolbar (Gnome, Apple, Microsoft)


I prefer the non-compound version of all of these except "tool bar",  
but it's hard to say why.  Some of the compound ones (esp.  
"statusbar") just don't look right as words, whereas "toolbar"  
probably looks okay because it's somewhat akin to "toolbox".

Cheeri,
Calum.

--
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems