Friday, August 27, 2010

Lifecycle or life-cycle or life cycle?

I am in the midst of writing my lesson plan for my science assignment... and obviously from the title of this post, the topic I chose is "Lifecycle of a.... Ladybug".

As I write and as I search for more information about this topic, my mind starts wondering about the "English" part of it... so, is it lifecycle or life-cycle or life cycle?

It's interesting to know that I'm not the only one who wonders about this... Anyway, i found this interesting reply in a website about this question...

What ever happened to the natural evolution of language? A compound generally starts open (life cycle), migrates to hyphenated (life-cycle), and ends up closed (lifecycle).
Many of us have been in the business long enough to remember when online help was on-line help or even "on line" help. Jeesh,when I was a kid, there was a hyphen in cooperation!
So, what do u think? Do anyone actually knows the answer? Or is there any answer at all? In my opinion, all 3 are acceptable, depending on who reads and evaluates it! ;)

4 comments:

Tandanie said...

I think (my understanding) any 2 words with meaning it should be space without any hyphenated...so life cycle should be "life cycle" since both have a meaning

Anonymous said...

If that is the case, the word 'sometime' would be some time. Something would be some thing, anyway would be any way, etc... etc...

richrach said...

good point there, anonymous.
i would say it all depends on the word. there shouldn't be a "rule" for this.

Anonymous said...

It really depends on the first question, is it "lifecycle" one word or "life cycle" two words ... th hyphenated version only applies if it is 2 words, and then you would use the hyphen if the word is being used as an adjective, such as "the life-cycle model" but as two words when it is the noun "the life cycle of a lady bug" ... but the first question still stands, is it one word or two.