Is it Startup or Start-up?

Is it Startup or Start-up?

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Updated 7/1/2020

Everywhere you look, there it is. The infamous 21st Century buzzword startup. Or is it start-up?

According to Wiki, ?A startup/start-up company is an entrepreneurial venture which is typically a newly emerged, fast-growing business that aims to meet a marketplace need by developing or offering an innovative product, process or service. A startup/start-up is usually a company such as a small business, a partnership or an organization designed to rapidly develop a scalable business model.?

According to a Polytechnic State nerd on Quora, ?a start-up is a noun and correct as hyphenated. Startup is not a word but often used in the vernacular.?

For some context, you can use the term non-profit or nonprofit, and either form is considered fine. So are both startup and start-up right too?

Let?s take a look at how the professionals handle it:

Startup? Wall Street Journal? AP Style Book? The Economist

vs

Start-up? New York Times? Financial Time? Merriam-Webster

As some of the biggest news and educational sources out there, it?s strange to see such a split between them.

How about the most popular tech blogs you ask?

Now this is where the results get juicy. A query of both iterations on Engadget.com went as follows

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Start-up

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Startup

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Notice the dates on the search results. Engadget uses both terms, including the Reuters. Very curious.

Then there?s TechCrunch.com.

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Start-up

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Startup

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In this case, it looks like both are used widely. If you take a closer look, ?startup? has over double the posts, with 42,400 results.

We?re at a tie in that case. How about the powers that be at Google.com?

Google.com 2020

?Startup?

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?Start-up?

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Google.com 2017

Startup

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vs

Start-up

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There is no clear winner when you look at Google.com results. Especially when you use quotes to exact match the terms.

I?d love to declare that the be-all and end-all result, but I can?t.

There?s still no definitive right answer. The results only point to the fact that one tends to be more popular? sometimes. So start-up wins. And then so does startup.

Is it startuporstart-up? Share your perspective with me onTwitter Ashley Huffman

And now a nod to my favorite fake start-up/startup, Pied Piper.

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