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Those Confounding Compound Words

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cooltext454534756 One of the questions my son asks me most often as he is writing is “Is ______ a compound word?”  I’m not exactly sure why compound words are so difficult to learn except that there doesn’t seem to be a hard and fast English rule about when to use them. Even word experts don’t agree on rules for compound words! For this reason, many times we either don’t use compound words when we should, OR we try to CREATE a compound word out of two words that aren’t normally connected.

I only recently found out that there are different FORMS of compound words, thanks to this article at Spelling City

Closed form: Two words are joined together to create a new meaning. EXAMPLES: firefly, softball, redhead, keyboard, makeup, notebook
Hyphenated form: The words are joined together by a hyphen. EXAMPLES: daughter-in-law, over-the-counter, six-year-old;
Open form: The words are open but when read together, a new meaning is formed. EXAMPLES: post office, real estate, full moon, half sister.

Although compound words aren’t always easy to remember when to use, your students can definitely get in some good practice using them either via the list finder at Spelling City (there are over 9 pages of compound word lists!) or by choosing one of four different categories of compound words for the games on Vocabulary.co.il! Here are the topics you may choose from:

  • Compound words a-f
  • Compound words g-l
  • Compound words m-r
  • Compound words s-z

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