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English grammar and communications hints and tips
Is it on-going or ongoing?
The required spelling here is ‘ongoing’. It means ‘progressing’, ‘continuing’ or ‘evolving’.
We often see phrases like these:
- This is an ongoing project.
- This is an ongoing problem.
- The ongoing issue cannot be resolved easily.
More often, though, text is peppered with inconsistent use: ‘ongoing’ this and ‘on-going’ that.
This word never has been hyphenated, but people think that it is a mix of ‘on’ and ‘going’, but if you think of someone ‘going on about grammar’, you would not say that that person was ‘ongoing’!
You can see that this is not a hyphenated compound at all. It’s always been all one word.
Remember, whenever you have those niggling queries going around the office (like ‘where to put this apostrophe’, ‘do we use that or which; dispatch or despatch; complimentary or complementary; practise or practice’), do just simply drop us an e-mail or call.
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