This is English you're talking about. What is "correct" is determined by
usage. "Strewn field" is undoubtedly acceptable, and is the traditional way
of writing it. However, there is a growing trend in recent English usage to
construct hybrid or portmanteau words- especially in technical areas (thus,
"webpage" is now probably more common than "web page"). So it isn't
surprising to see "strewnfield" used more often these days. Hyphenated words
seem to be falling out of favor somewhat.
IMO, any form is fine, but you should exercise consistency. It would be
distracting to see it used different ways in the same discussion.
Chris
*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Meteorites USA" <e...@meteoritesusa.com>
To: "Meteorite-list" <meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2010 8:39 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Strewnfield or Strewn Field?
Hi Listees,
Thanks to you all who've written in with kind words and comments on my new
article a few days back titled "What is a Meteorite Strewnfield?" I really
appreciate your compliments. I hope you all enjoyed it. If you haven't
read it yet please do so. It's a good informative read, and even has some
pretty pictures too. ;)
The reason for this email is to ask about proper use of the word(s)
strewnfield. While researching the article I noticed that the numerous
websites on the internet had 2 ways of spelling the it. Should it be
"Strewnfield" one word... or "Strewn Field" two seperate words?
Every time I type in strewnfield in a search it comes up with "Did you
mean?" "strewn field" with a space. I've seen it described as "Strewn
field" on Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strewn_field Then in the
paragraph just below it reads "strewnfield" all one word again. To make
matters more confusing Encyclopedia Britannica has the word with a hyphen
i.e; strewn-field.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/569002/strewn-field Google shows
67,500 results for the phrase "strewn field" and the same amount for
strewn-field" with a hyphen, meaning they don't recognize the hyphen.
Google also shows 23,700 results for the single word "strewnfield". Not to
mention the many articles and papers all over the internet with ALL 3 ways
of usage of the word.
So which is it? or does it really matter?
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