Calling all grammarians and spelling bee champions:
What is the correct spelling — or are there correct spellings:
Is it:
“Midcentury” … “mid-century” … or “mid century”?
As in (1): “midcentury modern sofa”, “mid-century modest house” or “mid century American history”. And would it change as in: (2) “in midcentury/mid-century/mid century America”.
Golly, over the past six+ years, we’ve spelled it every which way. Hey: Covering all our bases and google keywords, too, I guess. However, my Meade County High School English teacher Ivy B. Hawkins — a fantastic teacher who made us diagram sentences until we could do it in our sleep — would not be amused by this lax just get it onto the www who cares about spelling anymore 21st Century (21st-Century? 21st-century?) attitude of mine.
So which is it?
Finally, what exact parts of speech do you call the word/compound, in each usage? Ack! My brain explodes! As you respond, can you also provide your citations – add hotlink in your comment. Thank you!
Mary Elizabeth says
Finally, something on this site in which I am a “licensed professional”! (I have a degree in teaching, have studied historical linguistics, and have 27 years experience teaching English. I also have an MFA degree in poetry, which I call my “poetic license.”)
1)To answer your question, the term “midcentury,” whether hyphenated or not, is an adjective. (Ex: a midcentury house, midcentury design, etc.)
2) In English usage, compound words, historically, begin as two separate words. or open compounds (suit case, middle century, blue berry), then go through a hyphenated compound phase (suit-case, middle-century, blue-berry), then become one word without a hyphen, or closed compound (suitcase, blueberry, but not “middlecentury,” which is explained below). The way any given dictionary spells a compound is rather arbitrary, and is based on the dictionary publisher’s sense of where the word is in contemporary usage.
3) The word “midcentury” is not a compound word but a root word (century) with a prefix (mid). Instead of going through the last stage of the compound process, the term “middle of the century” was replaced with the adjective “midcentury.”
4) Patty is right that if the next word is capitalized or a figure, we do use a hyphen.
5) Finally, style books (for publishers, press services and newspapers) exist because of an attempt to standardize spelling and usage issues, which are constantly evolving. For example, Chaucer spelled “flower” as “flour,” which was pronounced “floo-er.” Many people have given up on trying to spell because one electronic spell checker or dictionary disagrees with the next one we encounter.
Besides midcentury, other perfectly good renovation compound words I have run across that are sometimes marked as misspelled on line include countertop, wallboard, sheetrock, and baseboard. So consider spelling not a question of right or wrong but as an evolving process that we are always trying to standardize. Hope this helps!
Robin, NV says
/bows in awe before Mary Elizabeth’s towering expertise. 🙂
I wish I had a poetic license.
Mary Elizabeth says
Aww, thanks Robin. You, too, can get a poetic license. You need to get a second mortgage on your “midcentury” house, or a scholarship, and apply to one of the MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in literature programs. 🙂
But I’m glad I did it, because otherwise I would never have had the nerve to submit my first book of poetry to a publisher.
pam kueber says
Thank you. This is terrific! Questions:
So even though these are clumsy sentences, admittedly, would you write, “I made a midsentence pause?
or
“I made a midsection addition.”
or
“There was a midgame timeout.”
Those don’t look right to me…
And, if midcentury was shortened from ‘middle of the century’, why do you call mid a prefix rather than recognizing the whole thing as a compound derived from ‘middle of the century’?
Rudy says
I sometimes use MidCentury. I like it that way! It’s all good…..a rose by any other name and all that….
Sandra says
Is this for a craigslist ad? Because if it is, you should spell it “Midcentury,” “mid-century,” and “mid century,” all in the same ad. Craigslist will not find any variables; if you search for “brick” it won’t find “bricks.”
pam kueber says
Good one!
Jennifer says
Stylebooks sure help, don’t they? To address why this is not obvious to everyone:
Language is in a constant state of change. Compound words are a good example. They start out as two separate words and begin being used together more and more often, and as that usage becomes more common in oral language, written language adapts first with a hyphen, later with no hyphen. Although this isn’t a compound word, but rather a prefix and base word, this is almost certainly the same phenomenon going on (and mid-mod is a similar phenomenon, with the base word being shortened because of the appealing cadence that echoes the jauntiness of the style it is describing).
Marcia says
This seems to be one of those ambiguous subjects and a matter of personal preference.
My Webster’s New College Dictionary (sorry no hotlink – it’s an older hardback) uses a hyphen and doesn’t capitalize “mid” in eras, such as “mid-Victorian”. This would indicate it would be mid-century.
“Grammar Girl” says, “Some prefixes need hyphens, such as “re—,” “mid—,“ and “ex—.“ For example
My ex-boyfriend took the movies I enjoyed.
The mid-1990s were interesting.”
Grammar Girl also says, “If leaving out the hyphen causes no ambiguity, some style guides, such as the Chicago Manual of Style, say it’s OK to leave it out .”
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/how-to-use-a-hyphen?page=1
I personally like the opening paragraph on wikipedia:
Mid-Century modern is an architectural, interior, product and graphic design that generally describes mid-20th century developments in modern design, architecture and urban development from roughly 1933 to 1965. The term, employed as a style descriptor as early as the mid-1950s, was reaffirmed in 1983 by Cara Greenberg in the title of her book, Mid-Century Modern: Furniture of the 1950s (Random House), celebrating the style that is now recognized by scholars and museums worldwide as a significant design movement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-century_modern
Mid-Century !!
pam kueber says
For sure me no think that you’re supposed to capitalize century even if you use the hyphen, as in ‘mid-century’
linda h says
When Atomic Ranch magazine addressed this issue, they were a little more concerned with popular usage than grammatical correctness. I hadn’t myself considered that there might be rules for using hyphens in the case of the word “midcentury”.
Queen of Fifty Cents says
I’m in the ‘midcentury’ camp (hmmm, in more ways than one, considering my own age, and that of my house!). But I’ve noticed when I do a search on a site like Craigslist I get twice as many hits with the other two variants. Which leads me to think that twice as many people don’t know what is correct and that we need to educate them!
chuck sullivan says
“Mid” is not a word, it is a prefix and it is never appropriate to separate a prefix or suffix from the root word, “century” in this case, with a hyphen. Therefore, the ONLY appropriate spelling for this word is “midcentury.”
JanetCinNC says
I think it depends on how you’re using it. If it’s being used as a noun, it would be “mid century.” If you are using it as a compound-word adjective, it would be “mid-century.” For example: “In the mid century, it was just a house. To us today, it’s a mid-century modest house.”
Patty says
Assiciated Press Stylebook, 2007 edition says no hyphen after mid unless the next word is capitalized or is a figure. Examples given include mid-America, midterm, or mid-30s.
Midcentury
Stephanie says
I agree with Patty. The Government Printing Office (GPO) Style Guide (which I follow for work) indicates the same:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-STYLEMANUAL-2008/pdf/GPO-STYLEMANUAL-2008.pdf
Chapter 7.10 (page 110)
Examples of words using “mid-” because of possibility for mis-pronunciation, confusion, etc. (page 151)
Should be “midcentury”