Is it Startup or Start-up?
Updated 7/1/2020
Everywhere you look, there it is. The infamous 21st Century buzzword startup. Or is it start-up?
According to Wiki, “A startup/start-up company is an entrepreneurial venture which is typically a newly emerged, fast-growing business that aims to meet a marketplace need by developing or offering an innovative product, process or service. A startup/start-up is usually a company such as a small business, a partnership or an organization designed to rapidly develop a scalable business model.”
According to a Polytechnic State nerd on Quora, “a start-up is a noun and correct as hyphenated. Startup is not a word but often used in the vernacular.”
For some context, you can use the term non-profit or nonprofit, and either form is considered fine. So are both startup and start-up right too?
Let’s take a look at how the professionals handle it:
Startup
⚫ Wall Street Journal
⚫ AP Style Book
⚫ The Economist
vs
Start-up
⚫ New York Times
⚫ Financial Time
⚫ Merriam-Webster
As some of the biggest news and educational sources out there, it’s strange to see such a split between them.
How about the most popular tech blogs you ask?
Now this is where the results get juicy. A query of both iterations on Engadget.com went as follows
Start-up
vs
Startup
Notice the dates on the search results. Engadget uses both terms, including the Reuters. Very curious.
Then there’s TechCrunch.com.
Start-up
vs
Startup
In this case, it looks like both are used widely. If you take a closer look, ‘startup” has over double the posts, with 42,400 results.
We’re at a tie in that case. How about the powers that be at Google.com?
Google.com 2020
“Startup”
vs
“Start-up”
Google.com 2017
Startup
vs
Start-up
There is no clear winner when you look at Google.com results. Especially when you use quotes to exact match the terms.
I’d love to declare that the be-all and end-all result, but I can’t.
There’s still no definitive right answer. The results only point to the fact that one tends to be more popular… sometimes. So start-up wins. And then so does startup.
Is it startup or start-up? Share your perspective with me on Twitter Ashley Huffman
And now a nod to my favorite fake start-up/startup, Pied Piper.
