A new (to me, IAC) spelling rule

[Jonathan Lighter]

Incredibly, I've never heard of this rule either.
OED shows "bed-bug" hyphenated since 1861. MW enters it as solid.

I didn't bother to check on "dragonfly" or "damselfly."

Conceivably it's a rule insisted on by a few anal-retentive entomologists.

Just as conceivably, the letter writer has a bee in his bonnet and a wild
hair elsewhere.

JL


On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 6:30 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: A new (to me, IAC) spelling rule
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> If this were true, a June bug couldn't be a June bug...DanG
>
> On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 6:23 PM, Ann Burlingham <ann at burlinghambooks.com>
> wrote:
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Ann Burlingham <ann at BURLINGHAMBOOKS.COM>
> > Subject:      Re: A new (to me, IAC) spelling rule
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 4:32 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> >> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> >> Subject:      A new (to me, IAC) spelling rule
> >>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> I may be AFU, here, but it seems to me that there is simply no reason
> >> on earth to sit around making up this kind of nonsense and then
> >> foisting it off on the polloi as an actual rule that they have to
> >> adhere to, lest they be considered only hemi-semi-literate.
> >>
> >> One of several letters to the NYT more or less making the same empty -
> >> IMO, IAC - claim:
> >>
> >> "Bed bugs is TWO words – not one. The general rule [WTF?! If there is
> >> such a rule, why wasn't I taught it at any time between 1942, when I
> >> entered grade school, and 1954, when I (was) graduated (from) high
> >> school?] for writing out common names of insects is as follows. If the
> >> insect name is a misnomer (e.g., the dragonfly is NOT a fly and
> >> neither is a damselfly), then the whole name is written as one word.
> >> If it is not a misnomer, then it is written as two words (e.g., house
> >> fly, which is a real fly [GB: Samuelson, James. ... The Common
> >> _Housefly_. 2nd ed. London, 1860]). The bed bug is a “true” bug and
> >> therefore is two words."
> >
> > crazy as a bedbug.
> >
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