Among the many words whose spellings appear to be changing is babysitter, confusing many a little firecracker of smartness. Is it one word, two words, or hyphenated?

Older editions of dictionaries tend to hyphenate the word. Increasingly, though, newer editions are lopping off the hyphen and spelling it as one word, as in: We asked Jane if she would be little Jimmy’s babysitter.

Go with babysitter as one word, no hyphen. Should anyone ask why, be one smart apple and say “brevity.”