Knowing What a Word is

We seem naturally to think of “words” as definite units of language. Yet, on every hand there is continual confusion as to what constitutes a word. It is something quite different from a mere group of letters—unless or until a word is made out of them. And there is no clearer distinction in the structure of English than the difference between a compound word and a phrase. In much printed matter nowadays, however, these distinctions are largely ignored.