atw: Re: Print Heads [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

As far as I can tell, if you're looking for a general grammatical 
principle that will give guidance on this issue, you're likely to be 
disappointed. It seems that common noun phrases like this gradually move 
from two separate words to two hyphenated words and then sometimes to one 
word, as they become more widely used. Fowler's Modern English Usage 
mentions how dictionary-makers decided to adopt the spelling 
'radioisotope' in the early 70s. And different publishers may adopt 
different forms.

Your approach of looking for similar constructions is probably the best 
you can do, unless you can find an actual quote of the exact phrase, used 
in some reputable source. The Australian Writers' and Editors' Guide 
(1991) recommends a hyphen for 'mast-head', though I would have thought 
'masthead' was more common. But the Microsoft Style Guide says to use 
'print queue' and I can't think of any phrases beginning with 'print' that 
use hyphens or one-word forms. (Unless you count 'print-out' or 
'printout', but there the second half isn't a noun.) 

Howard





"Nikki Ward" <Nikki.Ward@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
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atw: Print Heads
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Hi All, 

 

One of the developers asked me if ‘print heads’ was written as one or two 
words.  

 

I noted that I would write it as two words as one does not write ‘VCR 
heads’ or ‘print services’ as one word but I couldn’t explain why from a 
‘grammatical’ perspective… 

 

Any ideas?

 

Nikki

 



 

 

 

 

 

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