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Re: Style question: "war dial" vs. "wardial" vs. "war-dial"
Subject:Re: Style question: "war dial" vs. "wardial" vs. "war-dial" From:"Paul Goble" <pg -at- pgcommunication -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com Date:Tue, 3 Feb 2004 10:26:47 -0700
As usage becomes more common, compound words often progress from two
separate words, to a hyphenated word, to a single word. If the term
"war dial" was becoming more common, I might lean toward "war-dial"
to future-proof my writing. But, in my opinion, war dialing will soon
be a thing of the past, not a future trend.* So the evolution from
"war dial" to "war-dial" to "wardial" is probably arrested at
the "war dial" stage.
War dialing's wireless sibling, war driving, on the other hand, has
already matured to "wardriving".
* Modems? Connected to the same PC as a network? Not too common
anymore (he writes as he braces for an onslaught of "but I'm
sitting in front of one right now" messages). Google finds a bunch of
phrases like "war dialing was" and "the old days of war dialing".
Just a few pages are countering with "war dialing is still".
