Spelling: is it Tell tails or Tell tales? (Streamers on sails, not outboards)

[AndyL]

I thought Tell Tails, but maybe I'm wrong?

 

[penfold]

Wikipedia think tell tales, Holt sell them as tell tails.

 

[vyv_cox]

It's a clever twist, isn't it? I think it is probably telltails, all one word.

 

[The Q]

Both can be correct ,
Tails as in a cat's tail waving around.
Tales as in story giving you some information.

 

[johnalison]

It only makes sense to me with a hyphen, as in tell-tales. Are we still allowed hyphens or are they too unwoke?

 

[Cardinal]

Tell-tail I would say. The telltale is morally reprehensible and unreliable which one would not wish to rely upon.

 

[KompetentKrew]

RYA's Sail Trim Handbook for Cruisers and Wallace Ross's Sail Power both list telltales in their indices.

 

[rogerthebodger]

The word tell can ve a verb or a noun

this makes a difference to the meaning of teltale

It is also had a different meaning of use in English or American English

In American English it is an indicator on a sail

in English English is a verb so it felling a story,fib or lie

 

[vyv_cox]

It only makes sense to me with a hyphen, as in tell-tales. Are we still allowed hyphens or are they too unwoke?

I use hyphens quite frequently but they need too many keystrokes, so are doomed.

 

[elenya]

In the modern world I would suggest it may be Telltayll. This would provide a nod to some mystic past and set you apart from the rest as being free thinking.
But I might just be a grumpy old git.

 

[thinwater]

Check any dictionary, starting with OED. It is also in several sailing magazine writer style guides this way.

Telltale. One word.

The fact that there is a "tail" involved in this case is not relevant, because the root is the action of telling us what is happening.

 

[LittleSister]

Tell-tales or telltales.

 

[KevinV]

Are we still allowed hyphens or are they too unwoke?

Hyphens are still fine, though rare - hyphen reconstruction surgery however, is very much frowned upon. I think I've got that right

 

[MADRIGAL]

I would use a hyphen in "tell-tale"; however, I'm old-fashioned, and probably over-use hyphens, and commas, and semi-colons.
When the tell-tales are made of wool, I might call them wind tufts.

 

[VicS]

According to The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea and The Oxford English Dictionary it is telltale. One word, no hyphen

 

[RunAgroundHard]

Hyphens are still fine, though rare - hyphen reconstruction surgery however, is very much frowned upon. I think I've got that right

There may very well be a resurgence in the hyphen on the horizon. Word processing programmes such as Microsoft Word, use a form of AI to correct both grammar and style of writing. I have noticed since this feature was introduced in Microsoft's Word, that it suggests hyphenation quite frequently in my reports e.g. drawworks (a very large winch on the drill floor of oil rigs that hoists and lowers the drillstring into the well). As you can see, both drawworks and drillstring are word combinations that are suggested to be separated or hyphenated. As written is how the industry uses the words.

drillstring drawworks

Get ready for the resurgent rise of the hyphen but probably not the hymen.

 

[RunAgroundHard]

The inventor of telltales, or at least the person who brought them to the wider attention of the sailing world, Arvel Gentry, spells them as telltales. Anything else is just wrong (-;

Checking Trim on the Wind “Arvel Gentry Outlines a Useful System” By Arvel Gentry, SAIL Magazine, November 1973

http://www.gentrysailing.com/pdf-magazines/8-Checking-Trim-on-the-Wind.pdf

 

[Daydream believer]

Woolies?