Hi everybody.
I have a question about spelling that I don't seem to be able to resolve. I have been writing whole-wheat and whole-grain, when used as adjectives, with an hyphen, and the dictionary I have on my Mac supports this.
However, around the web I see a lot more often "whole wheat" and "whole grain" and don't seem to be able to find a resolution as to which version is correct.
Even on the NYTimes site, I can see "whole wheat" besides "whole-wheat".
Can any of you help me directly or recommend a source where I can finally find an answer to my question?
Thank you in advance for your help with this "whole" matter.
Simona

WELCOME, SIMONA

Someone will be able to help, I'm sure.

Any given publication may have a style guide that will dictate which form to use for articles published in that publication. Other than that, with no recognized authority stating the proper use of the language, it's up to the individual. BTW, your Mac dictionary has no idea whether the use of the word(s) in question is as an adjective.

The Macs don't have a grammar check? I thought they did. The Word versions always suck, to me, anyway. Often wrong, but somewhat useful on occasion....

I wouldn't think anyone has a grammar checker that's worth anything. One of my favorite games was taking one of those little things someone would hack together that had a whole list of homonyms that would make sense if the right words were there. "Eye sea ewe" for "I see you" for example, but more extensive. You feed it to a spell checker and it finds no problems. I would feed it to a grammar checker and find that it spotted very few problems.

and also I see some places, the words strung together with out the hyphen like youtube and thankyou and I've seen wholegrain that way too.

ihadanemailonce...withallthewordsjoinedtogetherandafterabitiwasabltoreaditnoproblems.

welcome, Simona!

kind of like baseball, isn't it? things change, and there is no write or wrong...

Welcome, what always struck me as funny is 'whole wheat rice'.
While maybe to be correct we should say whole grain rice. People found a way out by calling it "brown rice" which still is not quite true as the color isn't real brown but kind of sandy.

'whole wheat rice'

Is this a back-formation from the Double Dutch? But seriously, I had never heard of whole-wheat rice, but a quick minute spin of the Web via Google proves me to have led a sheltered life. I guess, it makes no never-mind that wheat originally meant a grain of any cereal.

As for the hyphenated or non-hyphenated, both spaced and spaceless. Shrug.

FWIW, you might find less potential for ambiguity with the hyphenated version.

Is this a back-formation from the Double Dutch?

Sure, sure I did the quick spin too because we have it the same way: volkoren rijst and bruine rijst. I had my doubts too. I know there may be more interesting issues than whole wheat rice, whole wheat corn maybe?

I generally use hyphens in compound adjectives.

Double Dutch....is that when two couples go on a date and the bill is split x4 ways

You're mostly not going to get in trouble that way as long as you don't run into some idiot like me who rants and raves about profligate hyphen use in the face of a dwindling supply.

as long as you don't run into some idiot like me who rants and raves about profligate hyphen use in the face of a dwindling supply

And, to think, she married that person.

Double Dutch....is that when....

Double Dutch and polysemy.

Without looking it up I think corn was originally generic for many grains, whereas maize was what we now call corn.

Corn was generic for many grains. We didn't even know about maize when we first used the word corn. A quick glance at the OED shows that, while wheat was used to refer to a number of grains, they were all closely related. It doesn't seem to have been used to refer to all cereal grains.

Never knew you used to call corn maize. We always used to call maize mais and still do. We used 'koren' as a generic for many grains too, though never for mais.