Bob Bernstein <rs@bernstein.providence.ri.us> writes:

> On Tue, Apr 08, 2003 at 10:16:46AM -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> 
> > The Merriam Webster Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary
> > both disagree with you. I tend to believe them.
> 
> The OED and Webster's 2nd Unabridged agree with John. I'd say you'd
> lose that battle of the dictionaries! <g>

Yes, but Donald Knuth says:

: Newly coined nonce words of English are often spelled with a hyphen,
: but the hyphen disappears when the words become widely used. For
: example, people used to write ``non-zero'' and ``soft-ware'' instead
: of ``nonzero'' and ``software''; the same trend has occurred for
: hundreds of other words. Thus it's high time for everybody to stop
: using the archaic spelling ``e-mail''. Think of how many keystrokes
: you will save in your lifetime if you stop now!
   -- http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html

--Jed

-- 
let s,o=" earthClockJnums",print_char in let(* But life wasn't yes-no, on-off.*)
rec f=function _::0::r->f r|n::d::r->o(* Life was shades of gray, and rainbows*)
s.[n/d];f(d::n mod d::r)|_->o '\n'in f(* not in the order of the spectrum.    *)
[797;8828;9588;19967;205;1329;825;4516];;(*-- L. E. Modesitt, Jr., _Adiamante_*)