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Is the spelling pre recession, prerecession or pre-recession? - Australian spelling
If you check the Macquarie and Australian Oxford dictionaries you'll not find an
entry for the spelling pre recession, prerecession or pre-recession. What are
you to do if the dictionaries don't help you?
Often words evolve over time. To-morrow became tomorrow. First, in general, if the
word is not in an Australian dictionary, that would indicate the usage has not
evolved enough to become a single word. If the hyphenated version doesn’t
appear in the dictionary that doesn’t rule it out, but you still don’t know.
Don’t fall for the trap of using dictionaries for other countries online as
versions of English for different countries may evolve differently over time.
Is the usage of the two words an adjective, or an adverb and perhaps should be
hyphenated?
Sometimes, if in doubt, perhaps the best approach, may be to rewrite the sentence.
Kelvin Eldridge
www.Australian-Dictionary.com.au
The preferred Australian English spelling.
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