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Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

A Way with Words, a radio show and podcast about language and linguistics.

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x wide, x-wide, or xwide
Glenn Atkinson
1
2008/02/28 - 4:42am

It keeps coming up. It's an company wide problem. It's causing industry-wide confusion. I fear it might be a nationwide dilemma.

My research leads me to prefer the unhyphenated one-word version, but I can't find an objective external source to help my colleagues out. Often a single document contains two or more versions of this admittedly overused construction.

Can you help?

-Glenn

Grant Barrett
San Diego, California
1532 Posts
(Offline)
2
2008/02/28 - 4:47am

Glenn, for spontaneous or nonce constructions, it should be hyphenated.

company-wide
industry-wide
economy-wide

However, there are some -wide constructions that are well established which are written as one word:

nationwide
countrywide
citywide

There are no forms of this that should be written as two words without the hyphen.

Guest
3
2008/02/28 - 8:52pm

I have noticed also that when referring to mobile homes it appears to be hyphenated as well(single-wide, double-wide, triple-wide, etc.)

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