![]() ![]() More than seven and a half years later, there is still no Merriam-Webster's Twelfth Collegiate-and the online version of Merriam-Webster's dictionary has not altered its treatment of the spelling of home page to reflect the fact that the spelling homepage is quite common. And in the long run, as people grow accustomed to seeing (and instantly recognizing the meaning of) the character string homepage, I expect the closed-up spelling to push the two-word spelling toward obsolescence. I'll be surprised if the next edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (the Twelfth) doesn't include both home page and homepage as common alternative spellings. Our magazines made the switch from home page to homepage within the past two years-and we are by no means early adopters of streamlined spellings of technology terms.Įlsewhere, the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition (2000) gives the spelling as " homepage or home page," with the closed-up spelling in the position of precedence. ![]() More recently, however, homepage has become increasingly common. In 1999, most publications (including the computer magazines where I work) used the two-word spelling. To my knowledge, home page debuts in the 1999 printing of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition it doesn't appear in the 1997 printing of the same edition. So while it may be authoritative in some sense, MW isn't committed to a particular spelling when popular usage goes a different way. I should note first that MW lists words as it finds them: When compiling and updating a dictionary for publication, it identifies what it perceives to be the preponderant spelling of a particular word among the published sources it has collected that use the term subsequently it alters that spelling to match reality if conditions change in the wild world of actual usage. ![]() I thought it's considered an authoritative source of English language, besides the OED. It's also interesting that none of the answers referred to Merriam-Webster's, which uses home page. The poster mentions Merriam-Webster's in a comment responding to Hugo's excellent answer: Own, write to me and I'll give you the necessary information to (If you already use it andĪre comfortable with making your own links from home pages of your Way to read the magazine, but I haven't heard from the web's
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