READERS’ WORDS

The hyphen sure is a very interesting little strip of type. I find it most useful to pacify the spell-check on my computer — amazing how readily it will accept a hyphen! — Mike Croft

Some people have a tendency to call people from Ghana “Ghananians”, whereas the correct term is Ghanaian. — Andile Nxele

The mania for “bicapitilisation” on the internet derives from the geeks who write the software that drives it. The objective is to use as few characters in a word as possible, while retaining its meaning. The method is known as CamelCase, and is universally used in software development. Why use “bi-capitilisation” when biCapitilisation is shorter, more elegant, and gets the wind up Sunday Times journalists? So fireUp your iPad and checkOut Wikipedia (WikiPedia?)! — Terry Griffin

It took a hiding from my English teacher for me to learn that “in order to can” must read “in order to”. — Stephen Nthite

I coined the term Self-Serving Acronym — one that not only unravels to reveal its meaning, as normal acronyms do, but also serves its meaning in its acronymic state. A normal acronym such as ANC means nothing until it is unravelled as African National Congress. So too are the acronyms SPCA, COSATU and SABC meaningless in their short form. But the Self-Serving Acronym serves its meaning before and after it is unravelled. Examples are FAT (Fat as A Tick), SLOB (Slow Lazy Overweight Bastard) and SAD (Sick as A Dog). — Don Clarke • E-mail words in need of protection to lifestyle@sundaytimes.co.za