[drupal-docs] standard for spelling in docs?

[Charlie Lowe]

I've been doing a lot of research on open source in the last couple of 
years, so I did a google desktop search of the articles. It looks like 
the unhyphenated version is being used 3-1 over the hyphenated one in 
publications. Sorry Eric ;)

Also, the rule for hyphenating definitely does state to "Use a hyphen to 
join two or more words serving as a single adjective before a noun" 
(from the Purdue OWL, but the same in most grammar books) But this usage 
is generally applied to compounds which are words that themselves do not 
function as a specific noun by themselves. When we have terms which are 
nouns, the hyphenation is more typically left off. For example, it would 
seem strange to write,

"a United-Nations building," "a distance-education course," or "a 
cable-news channel."

'Course, Drupal can be an "open-source" "content-management" system if 
you want it to be ;)

Anisa wrote:
> With regards to open source...  I did a little digging about, and 
> perhaps you could consider this explanation official:
> 
> http://www.catb.org/~esr/open-source.html
> /
> A note about usage. In accordance with normal English practice, the term 
> is "open source" standing alone, but "open-source" used as an adjective 
> or in compounds; thus, "open-source software"./
> 
> Personally, hyphens are tedious, and open source can just be written 
> open source for all I care, but if you want a *standard*...
> 
> Anisa.
> 
> Dries Buytaert wrote:
> 
>>On 21 May 2005, at 17:03, Charlie Lowe wrote:
>>  
>>
>>>email or e-mail
>>>    
>>>
>>
>>The Drupal code itself uses 'e-mail', not 'email'.
>>
>>  
>>
>>>I also noticed that "open source" was hyphenated in a couple of the ad
>>>leaflet submissions when it was used as an adjective. Open source  
>>>should
>>>never be hyphenated in any instance I can think of, although I  
>>>often see
>>>people doing it this way.
>>>    
>>>
>>
>>(Drupal is Free Software.  Not all Open Source software is Free  
>>Software.)
>>
>>--
>>Dries Buytaert  ::  http://www.buytaert.net/
>>
>>  
>>