There’s even a sneaky category of words that behave like adjectives in some situations, like afternoon (as in “an afternoon nap”), even though they are technically nouns. Underpants still should be worn under pants. After all, a superhero is often different from a super hero. Then, of course, there are compound nouns that have different meanings when closed or open. Or words like everybody and anyone which are closed as pronouns and not used as adjectives or adverbs. Except, of course, for the exceptions (this being English).īecause there are also words like evergreen or thoroughbred that are closed, both as nouns and as adjectives.Īnd anywhere is written in the same form, whether as an adverb (“Go anywhere you like”) or as a noun (“Easy to find from anywhere”). When the constituent words appear separately, these terms are nouns that are modified by the words that precede them (like some, any, or every).Įvery day I have the blues. In cases like these, when words that seem to have competing forms appear sometimes closed or sometimes separately, the closed versions (those written as a single word) are words that describe or modify other words:
There is, however, a hint of a method to this spelling madness. And have afternoon tea, but only if it’s actually after noon. Or we might write “Call me anytime” at any time. It’s one of the maddening complexities of English that we easily agree to make compound words-words composed of other words mashed together-but we don’t agree on easy or even consistent guidelines for doing so: sometimes we write this sometime adjective, when it’s used as a noun that expresses duration, as some time. In fact, you might call them everyday decisions. We all make decisions about which words to use when we write every day. Check here daily until you have them figured out.
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