Browse Definitions :

Good-bye, good-by, goodbye, goodby?

Writing for Business

Which is correct?
According to some lexicographers, we may soon be saying ______ to the word hello because so much communication these days is through social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, where greetings tend to be less formal.
a. good-bye
b. good-by
c. goodbye
d. goodby


Answer: c, for AP style.

However, if you aren’t constrained by a style guide, you can probably get away with any variation you choose.

@EditorMark argues for saying goodbye to the hyphen and reports on various guides:

“The American Heritage and Webster’s New World dictionaries list goodbye as the first spelling. Bryan Garner in “Garner’s Modern American Usage,” compares the hyphenated form to the archaic “to-day.”

Merriam-Webster, though, includes only “good-bye” and “good-by.” Many style guides, including the Chicago Manual of Style, prefer a Merriam-Webster dictionary, so “good-bye” is with us for now.

The word in any form is only a few hundred years old, stemming from the earlier “good morning” and “good day,” etc., and a shortening of the phrase ‘God be with you.’”

**********

Ed Hurley reported that both hello and goodbye might be on the way out back in 2003:

Pretty soon “hello” and “goodbye” may become as passe as “ye” and “thou.”

Dig Deeper on Writing for Business

Networking
  • remote infrastructure management

    Remote infrastructure management, or RIM, is a comprehensive approach to handling and overseeing an organization's IT ...

  • port address translation (PAT)

    Port address translation (PAT) is a type of network address translation (NAT) that maps a network's private internal IPv4 ...

  • network fabric

    'Network fabric' is a general term used to describe underlying data network infrastructure as a whole.

Security
CIO
  • business goals

    A business goal is an endpoint, accomplishment or target an organization wants to achieve in the short term or long term.

  • vertical SaaS (software as a service)

    Vertical SaaS describes a type of software as a service solution created for a specific industry, such as retail, financial ...

  • business process mapping

    Business process mapping is the visual display of the steps within a business process showing how it's done from start to finish.

HRSoftware
  • employee onboarding and offboarding

    Employee onboarding involves all the steps needed to get a new employee successfully deployed and productive, while offboarding ...

  • skill-based learning

    Skill-based learning develops students through hands-on practice and real-world application.

  • gamification

    Gamification is a strategy that integrates entertaining and immersive gaming elements into nongame contexts to enhance engagement...

Customer Experience
  • Microsoft Dynamics 365

    Dynamics 365 is a cloud-based portfolio of business applications from Microsoft that are designed to help organizations improve ...

  • Salesforce Commerce Cloud

    Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a cloud-based suite of products that enable e-commerce businesses to set up e-commerce sites, drive ...

  • Salesforce DX

    Salesforce DX, or SFDX, is a set of software development tools that lets developers build, test and ship many kinds of ...

Close