Poll: How do you spell euro + zone?
Europe’s problems have dominated economic and market news recently.
They’ve also inspired this month’s poll because I see different ways of spelling and punctuating the combination of euro + zone.
First, let me point out that you should not capitalize the initial letter of “euro” unless it’s in a context where you’d also capitalize “dollar.” For example, in an article title or the first word of a sentence. Although many writers capitalize “euro,” it’s a currency, not a place.
Euro + zone as a noun
I commonly see the region spelled “euro zone” as two separate words, with no hyphen, in U.S. publications. However, I found “eurozone” in Wikipedia, The Financial Times, and Investopedia.
Euro + zone as an adjective
There are two schools of thought about whether to hyphenate compound adjectives, as I discussed in “Should you hyphenate ‘fixed income’?”
The Wall Street Journal hyphenates euro-zone when the paper’s reporters uses the term as an adjective. You see an example in the image below.
Please note, in the image the term “euro-zone” appeared as the first word of a sentence. That’s the only reason it is capitalized.
Sources that used “eurozone” for the noun, also used it for the adjective. Perhaps eurozone is more popular in Europe because the term is more commonly used there. Words tend to lose their hyphens over time.
What’s the best practice?
I’m curious how you spell euro +zone.
Please answer the poll in the right-hand column of my blog. I’ll report on the results in my next newsletter.
Here are your choices for how to spell the term as a noun, as in “problems in the euro zone,” and as an adjective, as in “euro-zone steel consumption”:
- eurozone, as noun and adjective
- euro zone,as noun, and euro-zone as adjective
- euro-zone as noun and adjective
- I don’t know
Whatever you do, I hope you’re consistent. Consistency helps your readers understand you better.
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SUSAN WEINER, CFA
October 29th, 2011 at 1:37 am
Everything is a matter of personal preference…