[meteorite-list] Strewnfield or Strewn Field?

[Chris Peterson]

This is English you're talking about. What is "correct" is determined by 
usage. "Strewn field" is undoubtedly acceptable, and is the traditional way 
of writing it. However, there is a growing trend in recent English usage to 
construct hybrid or portmanteau words- especially in technical areas (thus, 
"webpage" is now probably more common than "web page"). So it isn't 
surprising to see "strewnfield" used more often these days. Hyphenated words 
seem to be falling out of favor somewhat.

IMO, any form is fine, but you should exercise consistency. It would be 
distracting to see it used different ways in the same discussion.

Chris

*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Meteorites USA" <eric at meteoritesusa.com>
To: "Meteorite-list" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2010 8:39 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Strewnfield or Strewn Field?


> Hi Listees,
>
> Thanks to you all who've written in with kind words and comments on my new 
> article a few days back titled "What is a Meteorite Strewnfield?" I really 
> appreciate your compliments. I hope you all enjoyed it. If you haven't 
> read it yet please do so. It's a good informative read, and even has some 
> pretty pictures too. ;)
>
> The reason for this email is to ask about proper use of the word(s) 
> strewnfield. While researching the article I noticed that the numerous 
> websites on the internet had 2 ways of spelling the it. Should it be 
> "Strewnfield" one word... or "Strewn Field" two seperate words?
>
> Every time I type in strewnfield in a search it comes up with "Did you 
> mean?" "strewn field" with a space. I've seen it described as "Strewn 
> field" on Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strewn_field Then in the 
> paragraph just below it reads "strewnfield" all one word again. To make 
> matters more confusing Encyclopedia Britannica has the word with a hyphen 
> i.e; strewn-field. 
> http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/569002/strewn-field Google shows 
> 67,500 results for the phrase "strewn field" and the same amount for 
> strewn-field" with a hyphen, meaning they don't recognize the hyphen. 
> Google also shows 23,700 results for the single word "strewnfield". Not to 
> mention the many articles and papers all over the internet with ALL 3 ways 
> of usage of the word.
>
> So which is it? or does it really matter?