It may seem silly to you, but for some of us the question “Does coworking have a hyphen?” is a big deal.  When I first came into Office Nomads and began writing for them, it was something we discussed for a long time. We ended up saying no to the hyphen. Although my initial instincts were for the hyphen, I now like it without. Independents Hall’s Alex Hillman is firm in his stance that coworking does not have a hyphen while most media outlets (especially the older, mainstream ones) are in the it-has-a-hyphen camp (read: co-working).

But I have to admit that I still feel a bit of ambiguity about the issue. I thought it worth sharing since Alex is initiating another push on the issue and it seems like the good thing to do to make sure everyone is aware of the battle they’re entering.

My understanding comes from the fact that I work as a journalist for a living and as such, I can tell you exactly why coworking appears and will continue to appear as “co-working” in most publications.

It’s the fault of the Associated Press Style Guide which is pretty much the base of every newspaper and magazine style guide out there. It has rules for just about anything from how to refer to Ford Motor Co. on the second reference (”Ford” not “FMC”) to when and how what state names should be abbreviated (There are eight that are not abbreviated: the five with five or less letters and the two that are not on the continent) to punctuation rules.

The copy editor who follows AP (and most of them follow some form of it) is going to default to a hyphen because AP says to:

co- Retain the hyphen when forming nouns, adjectives and verb that indicate occupation or status: co-worker

Like it or not, any copy editor who sees that is going to change a reference to coworking to co-working. There’s even a note that many of the “co-” words that are listed in AP are in the dictionary without a hyphen, but are given one by AP in the “interest of consistency.” So even changing the dictionary won’t help, as Alex suggested. We’ve got to get the AP to notice. And they’ve got their hands full with a failing business model to manage and a world of news to cover so it may be a long road.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and this one can be no exception. If coworking becomes well known enough by the public as opposed to co-working, media will have to change. But for now, big, old media is going to hyphenate and the smartest course of action may be to try and educate the smaller, online, and less formal media covering us.

One last word, then I’ll get off my geeky punctuation soapbox: It’s important to note that most likely, it is not the reporter’s fault if there is a hyphen. A reporter might write it without a hyphen and may even note that the word is spelled without a hyphen according to the industry, but if the copy editor decided that a hyphen is warranted, then there is nothing a beat or features reporter can do. (If someone like Thomas Friedman writes about coworking (And he should. It’s right up his alley.), he can put up a good fight with his copy editor and might get a change, so someone should pitch him on the idea.)

I took the image from a really interesting post by Jason Kintzler on FastCompany.com about the relevance of AP in the new-media/Web 2.0 world. It’s worth the read.

When I tell people I’m a journalist for a magazine with offices in Portland and San Francisco leaving just me in Seattle, the assumption is that I work at home. I then explain Office Nomads and coworking. More and more,  people realize they’ve heard of us or at least the concept of coworking. Rarely, I think, do they really get what coworking is. If you’re involved in coworking at all, you know how badly I want the questioners to understand that coworking is more than shared office space. That it’s community, incubation, colloboration, happy hours and zombie plans (more on that later).

Patrick from The Movement in Toronto has put together a podcast that is his attempt to explain coworking to the world. Actually, through a podcast he runs called Prototype, he’s letting some of the players in the movement explain it themselves. I just listened to the first two episodes and absolutely adored it. The show is a collection of voices from across the globe (literally) explaining the different feelings, set-ups, members, designs, business plans and other features of their coworking spaces. The result is an amazing cornucopia of the coworking possibilities that are out there. As different as each space and person sounds, they also all sound alike. As Patrick says on the Prototype blog:

In speaking with a friend about the podcast, I explained the amazing lesson was that all of these people sound like they’re describing the same place. In his subtle and knowing way, he responded: What I hear is that they are the same people.

Each episode is just a collection of the voices from different spaces explaining their space seemingly without prompting. That tight juxtaposition is what makes the differences and similarities so apparent. Butted up against each other, you hear statements such as:

“It’s shared office space.”

“We have a hot-desking policy…there’s no set desks.”

“It’s like a mobile phone tariff across the month.”

“You can be a tenant here if you can tell me why you’re a social innovator.”

or

“The space is a great loft.”

“We built a board room/library/kitchen that people can get some privacy in.”

“When we moved in, it was a bad looking, 80’s sort of of office.”

“The front door and the back door are both steel doors and they are zombie safe. They’re rated up to 50 zombies. We also have a zombie attack plan.”

“We’ve got  nice open plan kitchen and just behind that we have got a library area. It’s sort of cushions. People sleep in there, meditate in there.

It’s all so different, so unique. We are, after all, hearing from Colab, Office Nomads, Citizen Space, Station-C, Workspace, The Hub, and The Center of Social Innovation. And yet, they’re all similar in a way because wherever you go, coworking is obviously needed in a variety of different formats. I’m looking forward to learning more about the other spaces around the world, and to using this podcast to help explain the varieties of coworking  when I’m asked about it again in the future.

They will control the world, or have a few drinks together.

Last night there was a meeting of Seattle’s coworking illuminati, according to my sources. Okay, actually, Jacob and Susan told me that last night the owners of all five of Seattle’s coworking spaces went out for drinks together, but I thought the first lede was way more exciting to write.

Anyway, Jacob and Susan, co-owners of Office Nomads, knocked back a few stiff ones with Brian from Giraffe Labs, Brett from Greenwood Collective, Mike and Zachary from StartPad (where we’ve been before), and Nick from Seattle’s newest entry into coworking, Whitespace. Unfortunately, I wasn’t there so I can’t give you the uber-secret scoop on the sit-down. But I can tell you that the group had a good time and began to hatch some plans to help spread the gospel here in town.

Central to this plan, Jacob tells me, is to put together a group Web site that will act as a central resource for all those nomadic, upstart, collected, spacy or long-necked(?!) potential coworkers in the Emerald City. He’s not sure what will be on it yet, so neither am I, but you can rest assured, when I know, you’ll know.

In the meantime, with the Seattle coworking scene hopping this much, I feel like I am completely out of touch and here I am working in the center of it. Over the next few weeks I hope to make a visit myself to the other spaces I haven’t seen yet, and maybe even a repeat visit to StartPad just to say hi. I’ll make sure you know it’s going on so you can follow my coworking travels!

A side note: I’ve been on vacation which is why I haven’t written lately. But there’s a ton going on in the world of coworking right now so I have a ton of posts saved up that I want to write. More to come soon.