Author Topic: Word suggestion: ebook  (Read 504 times)

Alan W

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Word suggestion: ebook
« on: July 23, 2019, 04:28:47 PM »
In March a player sent this suggestion in via email:

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Hi Alan,
I'm playing a 7-by-many puzzle in Your Puzzles (BACKBONE) and tried the word EBOOK which was unknown.  It's spelled ebook on my library site (and many other places) and when I google it I also got Ebook, e-book and eBook.  Could ebook be classified as uncommon?
Thanks,

So far the dictionaries all seem to list e-book as the primary spelling. Dictionary.com and Wiktionary both give alternate forms of ebook and eBook. This last version is probably quite unusual in the dictionary world. While there are lots of brand names having a capital letter in the middle of a word, I think it's very unusual in words recognized as common nouns.

In usage all the versions are seen quite frequently. There's no doubt that ebook should be allowed in Chi. But should it be uncommon, as the suggester proposes? Probably it should, at least for the time being, precisely because of the multiple variants of the word.
Alan Walker
Creator of Lexigame websites

Morbius

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Re: Word suggestion: ebook
« Reply #1 on: July 24, 2019, 02:22:02 PM »
I agree that ebook should be uncommon.  I think e-book is the more common spelling (though, of course, it wouldn't be allowed in Chi because of the hyphen.)