# Single Word

Key: `representation.text.word`

Single word without spaces (alphanumeric or with common separators like hyphen).

Page: <https://meridian.online/docs/projects/finetype/types/representation/text/word>

Samples: `hello`, `world`, `hello-world`, `test_123`

## Background

### Origin

FineType's registry describes a single word as one without spaces, made of letters and digits or joined by common separators such as a hyphen.[[1]](https://github.com/meridian-online/finetype/blob/main/labels/definitions_representation.yaml) FineType's definition allows hyphens and underscores only in the middle of the value, so the first and last characters must be letters or digits.[[1]](https://github.com/meridian-online/finetype/blob/main/labels/definitions_representation.yaml) FineType's registry notes that the type was called text.word before its v1 migration.[[1]](https://github.com/meridian-online/finetype/blob/main/labels/definitions_representation.yaml)

### Use

Most programming languages do not allow spaces in names, so a delimiter is needed to mark where each word starts and ends.[[2]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_convention_%28programming%29) Some early languages, notably FORTRAN (1955) and ALGOL (1958), allowed spaces within identifiers.[[2]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_convention_%28programming%29) Snake case replaces each space with an underscore and writes words in all lower case.[[3]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_case) The hyphen is commonly used as a word separator when writing COBOL, Forth and Lisp.[[2]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_convention_%28programming%29) Hyphen-separated names are also common in Unix for commands and packages, and are used in CSS.[[2]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_convention_%28programming%29) C and Pascal-family languages avoided hyphens in names because the hyphen was their subtraction operator.[[2]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_convention_%28programming%29)

A value with a space in the middle is not a single word, so a column that mostly fits but has a few spaced values may be free text or a list of names instead. (Meridian's view)

## Sources

1. [finetype/labels/definitions\_representation.yaml at main · meridian-online/finetype · GitHub](https://github.com/meridian-online/finetype/blob/main/labels/definitions_representation.yaml) — FineType
2. [Naming convention (programming) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_convention_%28programming%29) — secondary source
3. [Snake case - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_case) — secondary source