Spellings Part 15  –  Another Ten

Here are another ten spellings that have cropped up in my translations/revisions and which I’ve looked up in the style guide I base my work on, the New Oxford Style Manual, to make sure I’m getting them correct. When this set of four books cannot give me a satisfactory answer, I then turn to the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

There are a number of reasons why I focus my interest on spellings both on the blog and in my work, and if you’d like to know what they are, then please read my post Why All the Fuss about Spellings and Style Guides?. Links below the post will take you to other entries in the series, and you can also find a full list of all the past bite-sized tips posts here.

1. snowshoe and snowshoeing = one word.

2. art deco = two words, no capitals.

3. zeitgeist = no capital, despite having one in the original German, and not in italics, according to the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, although it is written in italics in the New Oxford Spelling Dictionary (another instance of the books contradicting each other).

Foreign words are often italicised in English, especially when they are first introduced, so you need to look these up in the style guide you’re using. Once they’ve become assimilated into the language, they are usually written in roman type (i.e. normal).

4. bourgeoisie = not in italics, no capital, can be followed by either singular or plural verb.

5. stepfather/stepmother/stepdaughter/stepson/stepchild all written as one word (i.e. not hyphenated).

6. ft = short for foot and feet. My 2013 version of Microsoft Word wants to add a full point after the t, but this is not correct because it’s a contraction, and contractions don’t usually have points after them in UK English (there are some exceptions, see the previous bite-sized-tip post for an example).

Abbreviations, however, such as

7. vol. (volume), do have a full point after them.

8. pump house = this term is often seen as one word, but it’s actually two according to the OED.

9. miniseries = one word.

10. subsample = one word (no hyphens please).

Bite-sized Tips No. 18: Spellings Part 14 – Some Tricky Ones

Bite-sized Tips No. 20: Watch out for the Dragon

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