Quote:
Originally Posted by BionicGecko
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?
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Since English has no standards body, pretty much everything is based on usage and laziness. You used to only see "e-mail" when the concept of e-mail was new, but as people became more familiar with it, "email" became widespread. I guess eventually people get too lazy to type the extra character.
