Month: August 2008

“Polka Dot” vs. “Polka-dot” vs. “Polkadot”

Adjectives, Devolution toward Simpler, Nouns, Versus

I wondered which spelling was correct after seeing each in writing.

Problem:
One of the three spellings is incorrect.

Explanation:
The compound noun “polka dot” — with a space in the middle — is an Americanism that dates back to the 1880s.

The word “polka-dot” — with a hyphen in the middle — is the adjectival form of this noun.

The word “polkadot” — with neither a hyphen nor a space in the middle — is not recognized in most dictionaries, although a search for this form (with the quotation marks) in Google returned about 2,090,000 matches.

In contrast, a search in Google for “polka dot” — with a space in the middle — returned about 9,300,000 matches.

I believe that the elimination of the space in more than two million Web instances is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to omit the space than to include it.

Solution:
Use “polka dot” — with a space — as a noun. Use “polka-dot” — with a hyphen — as an adjective. Never use the no-space, no-hyphen form, which is a misspelling of the other two forms.

“… with a possible extention.”

Common English Blunders, Misspellings, Nouns

I saw this in an emailed advertisement for an instructional designer.

Problem:
The noun is misspelled.

Explanation:
The complete line was “Duration: ASAP – End of Oct. with a possible extention.” — spelled E-X-T-E-N-T-I-O-N.

There is no such word.

Then again, are recruiters supposed to be able to spell?

I believe so, and I believe that a job advertisement with misspellings hurts a recruiter’s reputation.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “extension” — with the letter “s” toward the end — 206,000,000 matches
  • “extention” — with the letter “t” toward the end — 5,760,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have written the noun correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of 35.8-to-1, which is bad.

Considering the nearly six million matches for the incorrect spelling, one would have to conclude that the misspelling is a common English blunder.

Solution:
“… with a possible extension.”

“w w Amazon dot com”

Common English Blunders, Devolution toward Simpler

Phrases like this have become increasingly common.

Problem:
A letter “w” is missing.

Explanation:
It is becoming an increasingly common English blunder to omit one “w” and the initial dot or period when an American English speaker tells another person the address of a website.

I believe that this is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It’s simpler to say two “w”s than to say three “w”s, and it’s simpler to omit a dot than to say it.

It’s worth noting that “w w Amazon dot com” — when written as “wwamazon.com” — is an actual domain name. What some Web users probably do not realize is that Amazon, the company, had to register this second domain name so that it could redirect traffic to “www.Amazon.com”.

Unfortunately, not all domain-name owners realize that others can effectively steal visitors away from their websites. For example, if one wanted to steal traffic from “www.acme.com”, then one could register “w w acme dot com” — written as “wwacme.com” — and get visitors who do not know to type three “w”s and the initial dot.

Solution:
“w w w dot Amazon dot com”