Talk:-a-thon

RFM discussion: November–December 2017

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for moves, mergers and splits (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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-a-thon

I think it should be moved to --a-thon because the first hyphen is included in the suffix. I don't really know what would normally be done here because I couldn't find any other suffixes that act this way. —Globins (talk) 03:46, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

I don't think so. We have just one entry for non- (and none for non--) even though it occurs both with and without the hyphen (nonverbal, non-verbal) and just one entry for -like (and non for --like) even though it also occurs both with and without the hyphen (baklavalike, baklava-like). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 07:40, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

That makes sense, but in this case the suffix is either "-a-thon" or "athon," which already has its own page. If the hyphen between "a" and "thon" is included, then the hyphen before "a" is always included too, so the first hyphen here is obligatory. For example, one of the citations has "love-a-thon," and it would also make sense to say "loveathon," but not "lovea-thon." —Globins 19:23, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

I think this would be better served by a usage note or even just a comment in {{lb}}; compare Irish an- which is sometimes spelled with a hyphen and sometimes without, depending on its meaning and the part of speech it's attached to. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:21, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

This is a bit of a tricky case, but I tend to agree with Angr and the comparison to "non--"; I think a usage note and a redirect will suffice. - -sche (discuss) 20:58, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

 Done: left at -a-thon, but with a usage notes. - -sche (discuss) 03:52, 29 December 2017 (UTC)