STAT readers split on 'healthcare' after AP drops the
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- Associated Press Stylebook changed "health care" to one word at the ACES conference in April, also collapsing "daycare" and "childcare" into single words
- STAT polled over 200 readers on whether to follow suit; about 60% favored one word and 40% favored two, per Sarah Mupo
- Mupo, STAT's director of editorial operations since the outlet's 2015 founding, created the STAT style guide and oversaw the reader call-out
- Readers backing one word cited industry trends and linguistic shifts such as the evolution of "babysitter" from two words to one
- Readers backing two words argued the spacing emphasizes both "health" and "care" and parallels compounds like "prenatal care," "dental care," and "medical care," which remain two words
- Roughly 90% of First Opinion op-eds already use the one-word form, editor Torie Bosch said, fueling recurring debates with contributors
Why it matters: STAT's choice carries editorial weight: if it adopts AP's one-word "healthcare," it formalizes the form already used in roughly 90% of its First Opinion op-eds and ends protracted writer-editor debates; if it holds at two words, it diverges from the wire-service stylebook most newsrooms follow. The 60-40 reader split shows even industry insiders and clinicians — the people who live the term daily — cannot agree on the linguistic framing of their own field.
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