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Subject:Re: realtime From:Karen Kay <karen -at- WORDWRITE -dot- COM> Date:Sat, 6 Dec 1997 15:39:45 -0800
Buck & Tilly Buchanan said:
> The dictionary says REAL-TIME (adjective) or
> "The computer may analyze the data in REAL TIME ..."
> But I've been seeing it lately as REALTIME
>
> My book uses this term: REALTIME ADHERENCE dozens of times...
>
> Ideas please.
It's one of those words that's in the process of changing. Like
back-end. You see backend all the time now. Hyphenation is only a
temporary state in the transition from two words to one. First, you
have two words and you hyphenate them when they are used in an
attributive fashion (i.e. as an adjective); then the word gets
hyphenated as a noun, too. Then the hyphen disappeared.
