Quote:
Originally Posted by nabsltd
The book I'm reading right now had "missingpersons bureau" in the text. This is what made me guess that it was a hyphen/soft-hyphen issue, because that is not a valid compound word.
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This is rather interesting to me, coming from a language where compound words are always hyphenated. What makes a hyphenless compound word valid or not in English? Is it only usage, or presence of the word in the dictionary?
As a matter of fact, the very word
hyphenless somehow "feels" correct (and seems to be
officially recognized), and yet Mobileread's grammar corrector flags it as a misspelling.