In many an outdated medium one may come across words such as gram-O-phone or shear-O-matic.
Where does this 'tradition' of having the O seperated come from?
Does this stylistic choice have name? I've tried searching the web for answers but my efforts where fruitless.
Examples of this form of writing would be:
In 1904, the company received its charter as the Berliner Gram-o-phone Company of Canada.
From Wikipedia
My thoughts and research on this: My first thought is it originated with the corporate advertising world. Then i thought, what’s old with an o in the middle. Gramophone! So I looked it up. American Heritage says it was originally a trademark for a Phonograph. Both words have an o in the middle and date to the late 1800s. The OED provided an interesting further possible clue: “origin, late 19th century : formed by inversion of elements of phonogram, a sound recording. The trademark gramophone is phonogram backwards. Easy enough from there to emphasize the O in the middle for advertising. It’s also easy to imagine the successful gramophone/phonogram inspiring copycat use by other firms with new gadgets to adopt the O - a 20th century ad meme before the word meme was coined. As others have noted, automatic provides a similar explanation, especially for kitchen gadgets, borrowing the O and adding the matic. It seems logical, but what I don’t know is if there are any examples earlier than gramophone/phonogram and variant phonograph.
