Yes there are plenty of folks on the internet tsk-tsking over the incorrect use of your and you’re, and grammar Nazis are ready to attack over any number of grammar no-nos, but there is a tiny rule that no one seems to be talking about and yet I see it being broken over and over!
And it drives me a little crazy. Mostly because I see it trips me up as I am reading and it seems to be done even on printed material that was proofread, by people who should know better.
What is the rule? It is the rule about words like setup, login, checkup, and backup being ONE WORD when they are nouns, but TWO separate words when they are verbs.
It makes sense when you think about it. Setup as one word is a thing, a noun, as in “I think this is a setup.”
Yet when you use it as a verb, it needs to be two words to denote action, as in “Let’s set up the new TV”
Makes sense, yes? But I see especially setup everywhere used as a verb and it is starting to really bug me.
I am a tech writer, so login and log in drive me crazy too, because we use those words all the time in user manuals. Login, the noun, is a thing, the name you enter when you log in (see what I did there?). You log in using a login. You log into a system (not login to a system). We deal with the word backup too…
