Danbooru

Tag Alias: sand_castle -> sandcastle

Posted under General

It seems that it's frequently spelled either sandcastle or sand castle without any kind of consistency. This Wikipedia article, for example, switches between the two quite a bit.
But I think that sand castle as two words is used at least somewhat more frequently considering the number of Google hits, and I also think it looks better.

As far as Danbooru tags go, sand_castle was used a lot more than sandcastle before the alias (something like 100 posts to 3 posts). So I think reversing it to be sandcastle -> sand_castle might be better.

The number of google results depend on how you do the search. If you search with quotes, "sandcastle" has more results than "sand castle". Searching without quotes mixes the spacing, plurals, sites that happen to have both "sand" and "castle" without having the words next to each other, etc. in the results. With or without quotes, searching "sand castle" also picks up the hyphenated variant to add to the count.

I initially said it should be one word because that's what my dictionary has. It doesn't matter that "sand sculpture" is two words. Sandstone, sandstorm, sandpaper, sandbox, sandbag, and a bunch of others are also one word and are generally more accepted as so. Google search some of these as two words without quotes and it may outnumber the results you get by searching it as one word without quotes due to what I said above.

I see, I'll keep in mind to search with quotes for things like this.

But I don't think it really matters even if "sandcastle" gets more Google hits than "sand castle". I still prefer sand_castle because it had more people on Danbooru using it from the start, and the most important point is to have one aliased to the other.

(Edited my first post the be less abrasive.)

Those "sand____" examples are a good point. However, when I think of the role "sand" has in those objects' existence, it feels more essential than "sand" as a descriptor for "castle". The general concepts of "storms" and "paper" are extremely different than "sandstorms" and "sandpaper", and even "bag" is very generic compared to the specific kind of thing a "sandbag" is. Least, that's my take.

Looking in my ol' dictionary (Webster's New American, 1995), sand[ ]castle" isn't even listed, though "sand dollar" and "sand trap" are.

English... Oy.

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