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From: Einde O'Callaghan <einde.ocallaghan@planet-interkom.de>
Newsgroups: alt.languages.english
Subject: Re: Spelling South East Asia
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:19:41 +0200
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Frederick Williams wrote:
> Einde O'Callaghan wrote:
>> Frederick Williams wrote:
>>> How does one spell South East Asia? Like that or Southeast Asia or
>>> South-East Asia?
>> You will find all three versions in use. A quick look at the results of
>> a Google search indicate that "southeast" is more common on American
>> websites, whereas "south east" seems to be more common on British, Irish
>> and Australian websites. The hyphenated form seems to be relatively
>> rare, even if it is also orthographically correct - actually technically
>> it is more correct in the adjectival form than "south east".
>>
>> Regards, Einde O'Callaghan
>
> I asked because D G E Hall's well-known book uses the hyphenated form in
> its title.
>
As I said, I think the hyphenated form is orthographically more correct
in British English - it's a compound adjective. According to the
Merriam-Webster Dictionary the single word form is correct in American
English.
However, a quick look at the Google search results, which don't
differentiate between the three forms, seems to indicate that the
two-word version is the most common form on British, Irish and
Australian websites, and the one-word version is dominant on American
websites. Sites using the hyphenated form seem to be a small minority.
Admittedly, that tells us nothing about correctness, but it tells zus a
lot about usage.
As an English teacher I'd accept all three forms as long as usage is
consistent within a particular piece of work.
Regards, Einde O'Callaghan
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