Hi All, Apologies in advance for being intentionally controversial, but this conversation about coworking with or without the hyphen nags at me and I figure I should say what I think about it even if I know it's going to be unpopular (and even if I don't really have a horse in the race).
*I DON'T SEE WHY IT MATTERS HOW YOU SPELL COWORKING* First, I do spell coworking, "coworking" and I have a coworking space, and if anyone asks me about spelling for anything associated with my space, I spell it without a hyphen. All that said, I do NOT think this is an important issue... at all. I think the issue that has been made of it--basically that "co-working" with a hyphen has a different meaning and that there's value in disambiguating that confusion--is off base and not linguistically justified. And my completely data-lacking working hypothesis is that some part of the reason change hasn't come on this issue is that the vast majority of people, including people running coworking spaces, agree, so they don't get involved (but also don't care, this perspective is neutral with respect to whether there should or shouldn't be a hyphen). *WHY IS THE DEBATE ABOUT THE SPELLING OF COWORKING A RED HERRING?* First, even if coworking and co-coworking really were two distinct common words, it would be fine to spell them the same way. We know whether we are talking about co-working with people who work at the same company and coworking with people in a coworking space not because of the hyphen, but because of the context. The words are pronounced exactly the same and we need to be clear enough in communication to have the context distinguish so that we can have a reasonable conversation off paper. Even if we were primarily communicating only in written language, we'd always be confronted with people who didn't know which spelling was which, and so coworking is *always*--in my experience--couched in a context that makes it clear that it refers to the activity we're all intimately familiar with. If coworking were spelled co-working it would be one of the thousands of other words that have homonyms/homophones that don't cause us trouble every day. Second, language is adaptive and it adapts to the needs of its users. If the ability to communicate coworking would be meaningfully enhanced by removing the hyphen, that would likely happen over time organically, as it tends to do. But I don't see how the ability to communicate the concept would be hampered in any way by using a hyphen instead of leaving in off. Third, the hyphen is there in the first place for a reason. Coworking without the hyphen is more naturally read cow-orking, as many of us and many not on this list have observed. Cow is already a dominant word in the English language and our brains work in such a way that for most people not reading and thinking about coworking on a regular basis, that's the reading that would come more naturally, especially as there is a word co-worker, that is semantically very closely related to our word, that has a hyphen. The hyphen there allows our brains to unambiguously read and pronounce that word as it ought to be read and pronounced, without wasting unnecessary tiny fractions of unconscious seconds thinking about how to read/pronounce/interpret the word. :) This is the only one of my arguments against neutrality on the spelling, and it tends toward including the hyphen. Fourth, and finally, co-working (describing working with people in the same company) and coworking (describing our industry), and the two terms derivative words, are not actually terms with high usage overlap. Search for "co-working" or "coworking" on Google, and it will refer to our industry almost 100% of the time. That's because people don't refer to the activity of working alongside co-workers in a company as "co-working". They call it going to work. Similar, people generally don't need to refer to people who we work with in a coworking space as coworkers. That would be confusing. Because it's just too much like the word that already exists that describes people you work with in the same company (co-workers). And a difference in a hyphen would just not solve that problem, since the words are pronounced identically and have very similar meaning, and so we'd need to use the context to differentiate anyway. Search for coworkers or co-workers on Google, and again, it will almost always refer to people who work together in a company, not people who work in a coworking space. The language usage of these words is non-overlapping enough that even if the first three points here were wrong, there's no real issue with ambiguity. That's also why we don't need to worry about it from a marketing/keyword point of view. If you use the keyword co-working or coworking, you don't have to worry that someone searching on the Internet for something related to people who work together in a company will stumble upon you, because that's just not the word anyone looking for that would use. Ditto, on the opposite side, for people searching for co-worker or coworker. You'd be foolish to use that as a keyword for your coworking space because anyone using that expression is looking for things related to the people they work with in a company. Anyway, that's my take on this issue. I love this community. I'm happy to spell it coworking because that's the preferred spelling from people active in building this community from earlier on. But do I think it matters? Almost not at all. And to the extend I do think it matters, from a purely linguistic/communicative point of view, co-working, with a hyphen, would be the preferred spelling. I think it's worth getting that counter-argument out there, since I think the main reason it's not being made is that the people on this side of the issue don't think it's important enough, not because this side of the argument doesn't have merit. Will On Wednesday, September 17, 2014 12:20:30 PM UTC+2, Marius Amado-Alves wrote: > > On Tuesday, 16 September 2014 23:10:20 UTC+1, Aaron Cruikshank wrote: >> >> I asked a professional editor friend of mine and this is what she had to >> say: >> >> "I think usually the style guides follow the dictionary, and the >> dictionary is descriptive, not prescriptive. I just had Roma check >> Webster's, and she says there's no entry for "coworking," just "coworker," >> > > What Webster might that be? The printed unabridged 3rd edition spells > "co-worker" > > ... getting a dictionary entry will be easier than convincing AP. The >> style guides will follow." >> > > Yes, that's the way to go. Webster has an online form for new word > proposals. But I think we should submit a file of inter-related words. Note > the difference between "co-worker" and "coworker" is syntactical (used in > sentences of different structure), not only semantical. The following is of > course tentative, to be discussed. The examples should be replaced by real > samples. > > cowork (verb) > to work at a coworking space > "I cowork at ExampleCoworkingSpace" > > co-worker (noun) > one who works with another : a fellow worker [sic] > "she's a co-worker of mine at Apple" > > coworker (noun) > person who attends a coworking space > "I'm a coworker at ExampleCoworkingSpace" > > coworking (noun) > the act of independent professionals working in the same place and > sharing resources > "coworking space": a facility where coworking takes place > > (What about "coworking community" and "coworking movement"? I had included > that at first, but decided to leave it out. The concepts of community and > movement in these phrases are the conventional ones, so the meaning is > composed.) > > -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. 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