Re: Decide: "Objective-C" or "Objective C"?

[David Carlton <carlton@math.stanford.edu>]

On Wed, 18 Sep 2002 13:07:16 -0700, Michael Snyder <msnyder@redhat.com> said:

> Also, first question: Should the name of the language (in comments
> etc.) be "Objective-C", or "Objective C" (hyphen or no)?

I'm not whom you've addressed this to, but I wanted to throw in my
grammatical two cents.

I assume the language is named Objective C rather than Objective-C; if
not, it should be.

But: if the words are being used as an adjective, I'm pretty sure you
should write it as Objective-C.

So, for example, "The Objective-C compiler compiles the programming
language named 'Objective C'."  (Whereas "The objective C compiler
compiles code written the C programming language just as it's supposed
to, even if the code in question was written by its dearest friend.")

But, of course, that's just my opinion; if actual practice is
consistently different from the above then obviously you should go
with actual practice.  And my opinion might even be wrong about the
grammatical niceties, even aside from actual practice.

David Carlton
carlton@math.stanford.edu