A great deal of naming online has to survive in places that do not allow spaces: addresses, account handles, file names, tags. The result is compressed strings of run-together words, which everybody reads and almost nobody thinks about. They are slower to read, easier to misparse, and occasionally produce readings nobody intended.

The costs are small individually and they apply to the name people see most often, so they add up. A few habits reduce them substantially at no cost at all.

Why compression happens

Web addresses cannot contain spaces, account handles usually cannot, and file names containing them cause trouble when moved between systems. So words get joined, and the joins are invisible because there is nothing to mark them.

Hyphens and underscores are the alternatives, and both have costs. Hyphens are readable and slightly awkward to say aloud; underscores disappear when text is underlined, which is exactly what happens to links. Neither is wrong and both should be chosen deliberately.

Reading is measurably slower

Readers parse compressed strings by segmenting them, and segmentation takes effort, particularly where a boundary is ambiguous. The effect is small per word and it applies at the moment somebody is deciding whether to click, which is where attention is scarcest.

This connects to the partial-typing argument in the piece on one-thumb readers. A name that is hard to parse is also hard to recall, and hard to type correctly from memory, which affects every route somebody might use to return.

Capitalisation is free

Capitalising each word inside a compressed string restores nearly all the readability and costs nothing, because most systems treat addresses as case-insensitive for display while still resolving them correctly. Written that way in a link, on a business card, or in a post, the name is immediately parseable.

It also helps people say it aloud, which matters for the word-of-mouth argument in the piece on titling. A name people can pronounce after seeing it once travels considerably further than one they have to spell out.

Ambiguous joins

Some combinations of words produce an unintended second reading at the join, and once somebody points it out, nobody can unsee it. This is a genuinely common problem and it has embarrassed a considerable number of organisations, which suggests it is not obvious in advance.

The check is to write the compressed form in lower case, show it to two or three people who have not seen it before, and ask what they read. It takes a minute and it is the only reliable way to catch something your own knowledge of the intended name conceals from you.

Consistency across places

Whatever form is chosen, using it everywhere matters more than which form it is. A name that appears run-together in one place, hyphenated in another and capitalised differently in a third fragments recognition across systems, which is the same problem described in the piece on spelling variants.

That includes file names and metadata, since files travel and carry their names with them. Consistency there is part of the attribution practice described in the archiving notes.

Length matters more than form

Beyond about three joined words, no formatting rescues a name. Compressed strings become unreadable and unmemorable at length, and the practical limit is lower than most people assume. Two words is comfortable, three is manageable, four is a mistake.

Where a longer name is needed, an abbreviation used consistently usually serves better than the full compression, provided the abbreviation is chosen rather than allowed to emerge from readers shortening it themselves.

Voice interfaces add a newer consideration. A name that cannot be said cannot be searched by speech, and a growing share of queries arrive that way, particularly from readers using a phone one-handed. Saying a candidate name aloud and asking somebody to type what they heard is a two-minute test that catches problems no amount of looking at the written form will reveal.

Choosing a name people can read

Keep it to two or three words, capitalise the joins wherever the display allows, check the lower-case form with somebody else, choose one form and use it everywhere, and prefer a chosen abbreviation to a long compression.

Our own naming and description practice is described in the editorial principles.