Back story uninteresting, really. I send out these notification emails at work all the time that feature this phrase. Can’t decide if it should have a hyphen, or not, or … something else I haven’t thought of.
Simple little Friday morning poll.
Back story uninteresting, really. I send out these notification emails at work all the time that feature this phrase. Can’t decide if it should have a hyphen, or not, or … something else I haven’t thought of.
Simple little Friday morning poll.
It would help me choose if I saw it used in a typical sentence.
You wouldn’t be wrong to use the hyphen, but my preference is for the hyphen(-)less version.
‘Setup’ is a made up word. Set-up is correct. If it’s good enough for the OED, it’s good enough for me.
Not really a sentence, but here’s a template of the billing emails I send out several times per week:
We will now begin billing the monthly fee and any other fees related to the website.
Bill to: {customer}
Monthly fee: $xx
Setup fee: $xyz
Please also {rest of email template goes on from here}
Well, all words are “made up” in one way or another. “Setup” looks cleaner and nicer to my eyes than “set-up” and in both Merriam-Webster and Random House, it looks like it’s the preferred spelling for American usage in this context. If you are asking about UK usage, it may be different.
Also, “setup” as one word dates back to 1890, so it’s not like it’s an extremely recent neologism.
ETA:
Citations:
Dictionary.com (note the different definitions for “set-up” and “setup.”)
Merriam-Webster (doesn’t even include a separate definition for “set-up.”)
Etymonline for the word origin.
Wiktionary.com. If you go to “set-up” it states it’s an “alternative form” of “setup.”
This grammar guide says that “set-up” is always wrong. (And I disagree with that.)
As does this one.
As does this one.
As do many others. And so on, and so forth.
In American English usage, “setup” is clearly preferred.
ETA: Oxford English American Learner’s Dictionary also seems to prefer “setup,” but the corresponding UK dictionary prefers “set-up.” So this does seem to be a difference between American English and UK English.
Oddly enough, I think the hyphenated version looks better in the example.
If I saw “setup” somewhere, I’d be wondering what a “se tup” is.
Given that virtually every single program/application I use has a Setup screen, not a Set-Up screen, I feel safe in saying that if that “made up” word is not now legit, it soon will be.
I don’t think I’ve ever encountered “set-up” before, to be frank. It’s “setup” if it’s a noun and “set up” if it’s a verb.
And given that’s it’s over 120 years old in American usage, it should be legit by now, no?
If you search the New York Times archive from 1981 to present (they’re broken down into two different time ranges), here are the results:
“setup man” : 774
“set-up man”: 102
“Setup fee” is a good bit closer, but still with more than 50% of instances than “set-up fee”
“setup fee”: 33
“set-up fee”: 21
American usage is strongly favoring “setup”, and like “to-morrow” becoming “tomorrow” and “e-mail” becoming “email” (in AP Style), I’d say “setup” is preferred in an American audience context.
However, I do disagree with the sites I’ve linked to above that say “set-up” is wrong.
According to the GPO Style Manual (pdf – page 167), it’s “setup.” The manual is the best source for answers to this sort of question.
However, in general, it’s a style issue and you can use whatever you want, as long as you’re consistent.
Agreed. Although the AP is being pretty progressive by calling for “email” instead of “e-mail,” it’s often had weird historical quirks. Believe it or not, AP Style mandated “teen-ager” instead of “teenager” up until 2005 (!).