h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Do we want to standardise on a couple of alternative forms?

It's generally agreed that preventive is preferred to preventative, and dissociate to disassociate.

I found quite a few occurrences in the EG - let me know if you'd like me to list them.

Icy

...and I meant to post this in Editorial Feedback, sorry.

Let a hundred flowers bloom, would be my reaction in this instance. They both seem to me to be acceptable English - I wouldn't like to change them just to have greater uniformity of usage.

It's true that some words like judg(e)ment have equally acceptable alternatives, but my view is that it's less equal for these ones.

I'm happy to abide by any editorial decision, of course

I'd rather leave them as they are since both are listed in the dictionary anyway - but if there had to be an editorial decision (or an etorial descion) about it, I guess I'd also abide by it.

Hi there. As both spellings are correct it would seem a bit unnecessary to correct them all. So we think you should let them stand. But how about an Entry on these and other words that have been simplified and shortened over time.

I'm not convinced it would make that riveting an entry, to be honest, Eds.

Just looked them up in Fowlers:

Dissociate was first recorded in 1623, is slightly later than its variant disassociate, and is now the more favoured form. Having said that, the variant is widely used and sounds more emphatic. If you want to retain both, then that's fine by me, but I'd prefer it if they weren't freely interchangeable - maybe retain the longer one for emphatic use only?

Preventive is far more common than preventative. We tend to use preventive to describe 'things that serve to prevent', such as medicines. Preventative on the other hand we tend to use with activities, eg preventative action or preventative measure. Maybe we could use one or t'other depending on this criterion?

Let me know if you agree. I'm keen that we take issues of language usage seriously on this site, as it is fast becoming a serious and quotable source for reliable information.

Icy

You know, I've never really seen the short forms used. I would have just assumed they were misspelling of the long forms.

I think agreeing for a future House Style is a good idea, but just how many of these types of words are there?