Re: Onsite or on-site?

[Ned Bedinger <doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com>]

Chris Morton wrote:
> Onsite or on-site?
> 
> Thogh I know both are correct, I believe the former has seen enough common
> usage since it was coined in the '60s so as to warrant it being usede
> without hypenation.
> 

...Then you pick up a copy of The New Yorker magazine and notice that 
they do the full treatment, with hyphen and diaeresis (no umlaut, pls.) 
I'm not sure what that says about them, but I do avoid the obvious 
reaction--after all, any serious publication with such a passion for 
great features (even great cartoons) cannot possibly also have its head 
firmly wedged, can it?

Personally, when I see co-Åperate with the hyphen and diaeresis, I count 
it as a sign that staid ivy-educated ivory tower-niks control the 
editorial policy. But on another plane, it strikes me also as sort of an 
exotic European affect.

Diacritical marks in general give me acute curiosity-inspired tramp 
steamer fantasies. I want to travel the world over just to hear WTF all 
those dots and swashes, accents and rings, all the jots and tittles and 
ligatures of written language actually _do_ to have become so 
painstakingly reproduced billions and trillions of times, every time a 
word is written.

Anyway, I generally don't give 'cooperate' any hyphen or whatever, I 
just write it and try to imagine that special someone who will fumble it 
so badly that they have to move along to the next word. I try to 
encourage reading skills by making that next word one that is likewise 
encumbered with missing diacriticals, like 'naive' or 'reenact'. I teach 
them to learn to read. And don't we all?

Have fun reading,

Ned Bedinger
doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com
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