Friday, May 18, 2007

Homeschooling, home school and home-schooler

Ouch!
This is one of those language problems that will surely incur the wrath of English departments in the Hudson Valley, no matter what we settle in.
Reporter Bonnie Langston was tasked to explore the growing trend of homeschooling in the region for our Sunday edition of the Freeman.
But how do you spell the different occurrences of the word as a noun, adjective, verb?
“Homeschooling” is the only entry in the dictionary, and it is one word. The Associated Press Stylebook and the Freeman style rules -- our reference guides -- were silent on this issue.
After much sweat and consultation, we came to a decision.

• “To homeschool,” (the verb that doesn’t exist in the dictionary, but people use anyway) is one word, since the gerund “homeshooling” is one word.
• Since there is no entry for the noun, “home school” has to be two words.
• The noun “home-schooler,” however, is hyphened. “Why?” you might ask with some confusion (I did). Because “schooler” -- aside from looking utterly weird -- is not a word. “Student” is. But “home student” sounds like you are studying a home, not at home.
• “Homeschooled,” the verb’s past tense, also is one word. Not so for the adjective “home-schooled” (hyphen rules apply here).

Of course, when in a proper name, there is nothing we can do. A name is a name (like “Associated Press Stylebook”).
Therefore, the Poughkeepsie Area Homeschoool Meetup Group has “Homeschool” as one word (same with “Meetup,” which should -– in my book -- have a hyphen).

All of this, unfortunately, will make the story look like the spelling is inconsistent. But there is a reason for the many ways of the different spellings.

Beautifully filled with irony, a Microsoft Word spell check will not recognize “homeschooling” as a word (word!) which, as I’ve said before, is the only one entry in the dictionary (I used “word!” as slang, by the way).

I am sure many of you will disagree with parts or all of this.

My head hurts now.