One of the things that I try to do—even though some readers may not notice or care—is to be consistent throughout any single book with how I describe things. In doing this, I’ve needed a lot of help from my long-suffering editors, but recently I’ve been trying to get at least a little out front of them.
Fairly early on in my Riviera Project, I’ve settled on a few guidelines. First, if the term is a trademark or brand name (like Turbo Hydra-Matic or Soft-Ray), I will spell it exactly as it was spelled in period descriptions. This decision makes things a little interesting sometimes as spelling didn’t always stay consistent—for example, I’ve seen Turbo Hydra-Matic, Turbo Hydra-matic, and Turbo Hydramatic in various General Motors materials.
linked from the Old Car Manual Project‘s amazing brochures pages.
Handling other more generic terms is different. I’ve got to make some judgment calls—an example is “air bag” versus “airbag,” where Wikipedia and NHTSA disagree (the AACA’s general forum leaned heavily toward the one word form). I think “blackwall” versus “black wall” is an easier decision, though my grammar checkers do not like blackwall. There’s also deck lid/decklid, roof line/roofline, trunk lid/trunklid, and name plate/nameplate—and I’m sure there are some more.
Decisions, decisions, decisions …
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