Goers

 

Goers drive me nuts. I’m not talking about the kind of goers that so fascinated Eric Idle in an old Monty Python sketch. I’m talking about the goers you add at the end of words like party, beach, festival, mall -- you name it. Any place people go, you can tack a “goers” on the end of.

Because I edit feature articles, goers come up quite a bit. And no two writers “goer” alike.

“Festival goers can also check out the 40-plus carnival rides.”

“Beach-goers flock to Santa Monica ever weekend.”

“Partygoers enjoyed cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.”

What’s worse is that, despite years of dealing with this, I’m still not confident in my handling of “goers.” So when I come across a goer in my editing, I wait for a moment till my heart rate returns to normal, then I take a meticulous approach.

First I check the style guide I’m using. AP doesn’t have a listing for “goer.” Under “suffixes,” AP says, “If a word combination is not listed in ‘Webster’s New World,’ use two words for the verb form; hyphenate any noun or adjective forms.”

But here’s where it gets a little confusing: Webster’s doesn’t actually list “goer” as a suffix. It lists it only as a noun. Still, because AP’s suffix advice specifically mentions “word combinations,” we can reasonably assume it also applies to a noun like “goer.”

Things would be a lot easier if Webster’s said “goer” was also a suffix because style rules for suffixes are much clearer. If the dictionary says something’s a suffix, you can just tack it right on the end of a word with no hyphen required.

For a noun like “goer,” we can glean that AP prefers hyphenated forms, but only if the combo you want isn’t already in the dictionary. That means I have to check the exact word first.

I look under the Fs for “festivalgoer” -- nothing.

I look under the Bs for “beachgoer” -- nothing.

But when I look under the Ps, I see “partygoer” right there in black and white.

Thus, in AP style, I’d write: The festival-goers and the beach-goers and partygoers had a nice time.

“The Chicago Manual of Style’s” designated dictionary also treats “goer” as a noun only, but Chicago has a different opinion on what to do with it. According to Chicago, compounds formed with two nouns in which the first noun modifies the second (as in “student nurse”) do not take hyphens. So compounds not found in Chicago’s preferred “Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary” take no hyphen. However, unlike “Webster’s New World,” the Merriam Webster dictionary does have an entry for “beachgoer” and even one for “festivalgoer.”

So, in Chicago style: “A dictionary goer soon sees she should write partygoer, beachgoer, and festivalgoer, creating a clear danger she’ll end up an asylum goer.”

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 27th, 2011 at 4:55 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.