How do you spell it? “Out-performance” vs. “outperformance”

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The Firefox browser’s spellchecker keeps tagging “outperformance” as a typo. I feel very annoyed when this happens because I believe it’s wrong.

The case for “outperformance”

Here’s the evidence in favor of marrying “out” and “performance” so they’re one word:

  1. “Generally do not hyphenate when using a prefix with a word that starts with a consonant,” says The Associated Press Stylebook. Note: I’m using the 2007 version of the AP Stylebook.
  2. Words into Type agrees, saying “The modern tendency is to eliminate the hyphen between a prefix and a root unless the root is a proper noun or adjective, such as un-American.”
  3. Google brings up about 1.2 million examples for “+fund +outperformance” vs.fewer than 700,000 for “+fund +out-performance.”

The case for “out-performance” with a hyphen

I mustered one piece of  evidence in favor of hyphenating “out-performance.” Google yields more than 931 million search results for “out-performance” vs. only 1.01 million for “outperformance.” It’s strange that the first four results use the spelling “outperformance,”as you see in the screen shot on the left.

Results of my spelling poll

When I polled my newsletter and blog readers about the proper spelling, “outperformance” won in a landslide, with 92% of the vote. Here are the results:

  • Outperformance: 92%
  • Out-performance: 0
  • Out performance: 8%
Note: I updated this piece on December 1, 2013, to share the results of my poll, instead of directing readers to a poll that’s no longer active. This post originated as a request for readers to respond to a poll.

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3 replies
  2. Susan Weiner, CFA
    Susan Weiner, CFA says:

    Thanks, Kristin!

    I should do a poll on advisor/adviser. I think the main thing is to be consistent in how you spell it. I use “advisor” because that’s how my two most recent employers spelled it.

  3. Howard S Sample
    Howard S Sample says:

    Reminds me of a recent article in Writers Digest as

    to the perpetual confusion between “whom” and “who”.

    In other words, when do you use which?

    Personally, I’ve known (or HOPE I DO) since high

    school how to distinguish between the two. But apparently

    there are a lot of professional writers who disagree as

    to the guidelines.

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