Category talk:English terms spelled with -

Completely useless category. There are around 17000 potential entries and it's a waste of time to add them. We might as well have a category for English words spelled with 'z'. DTLHS (talk) 22:49, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete, I have been meaning to nominate a few such categories for deletion, but haven't got round to it. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:00, 30 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Certainly something that would be better built into an improved search function. Equinox ◑ 09:12, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete. Maro 14:40, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

deleted -- Liliana • 14:58, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

RFD discussion: December 2017–September 2022
Previously deleted; manually. —suzukaze (t・c) 08:55, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep How is this any different than anything else in Category:English terms by their individual characters? —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:00, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete As I understand it, these "terms by their individual characters" are for categorizing terms using characters that are unusual in the given language. For English, that would be e.g. letters with diacritical marks, like é and ç, but there is nothing unusual about terms using a hyphen. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 09:20, 16 December 2017 (UTC)


 * I am curious as to the intended use case for such categories. Equinox ◑ 09:21, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I think some people like the idea of using a dictionary to find lexicographical/orthographic oddities. We keep a category of English terms spelled with Ç for the same reason we list anagrams or keep a category of English palindromes. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 10:37, 16 December 2017 (UTC)


 * The anagrams and palindromes are at least useful in solving word puzzles. Equinox ◑ 10:38, 16 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Weak keep - We have a category for all plural forms even though most plurals are not at all unusual - I can't see why we cannot have a category for hyphenated terms. I do appreciate the point that hyphens are not unusual (hence the 'weak') but the use of punctuation within a word is somehow less standard than the use of the letters A to Z. John Cross (talk) 10:42, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
 * If it's kept please edit Module:languages/data2 so people don't waste their time adding it manually. DTLHS (talk) 00:53, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
 * It's a category that potentially has some use for less experienced users who are trying to search for a term beginning with "-". What would be more useful would be a category for terms beginning with "-". The problem that is addressed is the impossibility of finding such terms without using the relatively advanced "insource" feature of CirrusSearch. DCDuring (talk) 13:51, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Are there any English entries beginning with "-" that aren't in CAT:English suffixes or CAT:English suffix forms? —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 16:10, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Isn't that easy to determine using CirrusSearch, with "insource"? DCDuring (talk) 17:08, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete, useless crap. --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 01:19, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 01:34, 10 January 2018 (UTC)


 * If this is kept, the code that prevents it from being added by automatically by the headword templates needs to be removed again. Please don't close this discussion (at least, in a way that keeps this) without fixing that. Weak keep, IMO. I sometimes want to check for words spelled with a certain character, and it's easier to check a category than to go to the bother of performing my own database dump search. - -sche (discuss) 16:31, 3 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete per Mahāgaja. – Julia (talk) • formerly Gormflaith • 18:10, 3 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep. I like it. Supevan (talk) 06:57, 5 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete, we might as well have Category:English terms spelled with q. bd2412 T 20:56, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. Fay Freak (talk) 21:11, 13 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete. &mdash; Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 19:49, 13 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Keep. Removing this category is just more kicking sand in the face of the hyphen. "We don’t notice it, but over the last few years, a mass murder has been happening. On a micro scale, it may not seem too obvious, but when you look at the big picture, you’ll see it. In 2007 alone, the Oxford English Dictionary released a new edition wherein 16,000 compound words had their hyphens removed. This change is seen as a death caused by the Internet age." --Geographyinitiative (talk) 22:54, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete per above arguments to delete. &mdash; S URJECTION / T / C / L / 14:04, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I've gone back and forth on this for a while, I vote we keep this category. Binarystep (talk) 09:13, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep - it isn’t nearly as common as people are making out. Theknightwho (talk) 18:06, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete per Mahagaja. Ultimateria (talk) 01:36, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

RFD-closed as no consensus... after 5 years the keepers and deleters clearly haven't convinced each other. No value keeping this discussion open for another 5 years. This, that and the other (talk) 11:07, 26 September 2022 (UTC)