Nobody and nowhere are one word, so is the reason no-one is hyphenated is to avoid the ambiguously double O, or is there another technical reason?

lanfranco

"No one" should not be hyphenated at all. The words "no" and "one" should always be distinct, and it is not the standard practice to hyphenate them. Though here's another, badly-written and poorly-justified view: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:No_one Sep 07 05, 5:58 PM

satguru

Oops, can I modify my question to 'two words' rather than one word... They seemed to like the hyphen though, and it appears these variations come and go more as a fashion than correct or not. I still suspect the double O was the factor in isolating it though, and they couldn't find any references either! Sep 07 05, 6:16 PM

helenasykes

technically all no one, no body and no where should all be seperate words, it is a common mistake to make nobody and nowhere one word, in the same way many people write a lot 'alot' Sep 09 05, 2:11 PM

Baloo55th

Just passing through as I don't get much time to come in very often. No-one is always hypenated by me, and it is in both hyphenated an unhyphenated forms in my dictionary. Nowhere and nobody (and the archaic but deserving to be revived nowhence and nowhither) go back to Old English in their one word forms. The hyphen is there to avoid possible mispronunciation by confusion with noon. Similarly, co-operate is hyphenated (by me, at least) in order to avoid confusion with the people that make barrels, although I'm sure they work quite well together. Sep 09 05, 2:35 PM

lanfranco

Look into dieresis, Baloo. As for "nobody" and "nowhere," they are accepted as single, non-hyphenated words by both the OED and Webster's. "No-one" does not appear in either dictionary, but Webster's does include "no one," without a hyphen, as a synonym for "nobody." Sep 09 05, 4:21 PM

satguru

I see, what we actually need, to maintain the single word consistency would actually be nöone. I think I was right then, it's the double O dilemma that seems to have caused the apparent inconsistency, as pointed out with co-operate (which, incidentally, I've always seen used with a hyphen, unlike no-one which is clearly an unpopular version). But look out for how many variations actually exist. If it wasn't for the difficulty in raising a diaresis on a keyboard I'd start offering it as a new spelling, but nöone would be likely to bother to go to that length to use it! (or maybe some would...?) Sep 09 05, 5:17 PM