We’re debating this at work.
Merriam-Webster says it’s “subclassification”.
Dictionary.Reference.com allows “sub-classification” and “subclassification”
Is there a ‘more correct’ word to use?
(If it helps, we're after Australian English)
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Are you using it to mean "the act of further classifying items with finer granularity" or are you talking about a way of handling items beyond or below the level of classification?– JimCommented Jun 18, 2013 at 4:59
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Finer granularity. If you were talking about say, an industry that is booming, you might say industry classification ... "IT", sub(-)classification "mobile gaming".– Mark MayoCommented Jun 18, 2013 at 5:07
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Then you should use subclassification that goes along with the verb subclassify and the noun subclass neither of which requires a hyphen.– JimCommented Jun 18, 2013 at 5:11
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Despite it existing with one on some dictionary sites?– Mark MayoCommented Jun 18, 2013 at 5:14
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I believe that reference.com uses a hyphen where you use a hyphen in your query. E.g.: dictionary.reference.com/browse/tele-phone?s=t&ld=1136 and dictionary.reference.com/browse/telephone?s=t&ld=1136– JimCommented Jun 18, 2013 at 5:18
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1 Answer
No, neither is more correct. According to Google Ngrams, subclassification is more popular.
answered Jun 18, 2013 at 8:15
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The difference is both geographic and stylistic so there are no clearly defined "rules" but American English tends to use fewer hyphens than British English which may partly account for the graph posted by Matt Эллен. I can't claim to be sure which is more common for Australians but in other areas of use Australian English seems to be more often akin to British English than American English.– user46250Commented Jun 18, 2013 at 8:48
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I may be doing it wrong, but I can't get usable results from Ngram Viewer for hyphenated words. The problem is that Ngram replaces the hyphenated word (such as "sub-classification") with what appears to be "sub [minus] classification." One sign that Ngram isn't tracking occurrences of the spelling "sub-classification" is that the search results below the graph don't include any results for that spelling. You may also get a note from Ngram Viewer saying "Replaced [hyphenated word] with [word broken into two words with ' - ' separating them] to match how we processed the book." [continued] Commented Jun 18, 2013 at 21:06
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Finally, in the search results for, say, "halfbaked" (in an Ngram comparison of "halfbaked" versus "half-baked"), many of the words that Ngram reads as "halfbaked" are instances where a line break produces "half-" at the end of one line and "baked" at the beginning of the next. Though Ngram interprets these line-broken words as being artificially broken examples of "halfbaked," they may instead be examples of "half-baked" that just happen to straddle a line break. If anyone knows how to get valid results for hyphenated words in Ngram Viewer, please let me know how to do it. Thanks! Commented Jun 18, 2013 at 21:07