Sugarcane or Sugar cane? [duplicate]

hyphenation compounds open-vs-closed-vs-hyphenated word-formation colloquialisms

Is there a difference between "sugar cane" and sugarcane? Is sugarcane wrong? What is the gramatical rule for joining two names like that?

I have found 13.500 entries on google for sugarcane, but 16.000 for sugar cane.

Is that a matter of style or grammar? What do you guys think?


Solution 1:

Both forms are widely used, though the closed form has been more popular recently, more so in American English:

Google NGram showing relative popularity of "sugarcane" and "sugar cane"

The phenomenon of open compounds becoming closed has been covered in several previous questions, starting with Why are some words combined into a single word while others stay as two words?

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