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In filling out forms, I'm starting to see a lot of this:

Firstname: xx

Lastname: yy

Is it generally acceptable to join the words like that? Or should we be sticking to:

First Name: xx

Last Name: yy

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1 Answer

up vote 11 down vote accepted

It should be two words: "First Name"

There does appear to be an upward trend of lumping the words together, but it's still pretty small - and incorrect. I suspect some factors in that trend include:

  • Popularity of "username" leading people to think that all such uses can be smushed together into one word.
  • Accidental or automated use of naming conventions from variable names or database tables (which will usually not have spaces in them).
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+1. The second factor is an easy trap to fall into into Visual Studio and some other IDEs as you type a variable called firstname, a SQL column called firstname, a form field called firstname so when you apply the label to the form field it's so easy to type firstname instead of "First name". – Wudang Aug 20 '12 at 12:42
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As an aside, here's the difference between username and user name: english.stackexchange.com/questions/43436/… – Hugo Aug 20 '12 at 20:47

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