How Do You Spell “Home Page?”
October 28, 2009 at 8:06 am
In 1898 someone came up with the idea of putting tea into porous sacks and the “tea bag” was invented. By 1936, the word was being spelled “tea-bag”. In 1977, it was called the “teabag”. I came across this fact in the captivating book by Naomi Baron called “Always On: Language In An Online World” (2008).
We see similar practice with the evolving language of the web – or Computer Mediated Communication. I have always rebelled against e-mail, preferring to use the more (advanced) email. Likewise with online and offline. But strangely, never homepage or insidepage. My proposals are peppered with the original use of the words “home page” and “inside pages” indicating that in this regard I’m back at the very beginning of spelling.
What do you use? Are you consistent? Are you aware?
Comments (2 responses)
English usage has been an evolving, democratic process, and the strictures of writers like Fowler are not fixed in cement for all time. I think it is prudent to be aware of the concept of usage and to dip into the standard reprinted works of Fowler and others, but to be aware too that there is no such institution as an English Academy on the same puritanical lines as l’Academie francaise or its Italian counterpart. One reason that English has spread internationally so speedily has been its flexibility of use and vocabulary expansion. For a pragmatic discussion, with several helpful examples, of hyphen use/usage, see these comments by an academic from Sussex University:
http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/department/docs/punctuation/node24.html
Good comment Garreth. I for one am excited by how English moves with the times. I rejoice in the creativity shown by us humans as we meld the language of Shakespeare to our contemporary needs as a computer mediated language. Here’s to us!
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