I have a hyphenation problem. I thought I understood the rule of when to insert a hyphen, but it's a term used so inconsistently I can't be sure. For for the sake of this question, I will write the word hyphenated even though I am not entirely sure. The word is:
micro-endoscope
I see it written as:
- micro-endoscope (which I favour because micro is a qualifier that is pertinent to describing what kind of endoscope it is)
- microendoscope (then again this could be valid, because micrometer isn't hyphenated, and micro is still a qualifier...)
- micro endoscope (I personally doubt this is correct)
And most frustratingly, I see all three used even in a single paper, which to me is sloppy. Unless there a grammatical use rule I am missing that describes when a word like this is hyphenated...
Answer
A Google Ngram shows that there is no incidence of either "micro-endoscope" or "micro endoscope," but "microendoscope" is used with prevalence. Therefore, it would appear that "microendoscope" is the proper way to write it. The appearance of the other two spellings in the paper to which you refer appear to be typos or errors in editing.
Incidentally, without a hyphen is consistent with how the prefix "micro-" generally appears (e.g., microeconomics, microbiology, microcosm, micromanage, etc.).
No comments:
Post a Comment