Never-ending vs. neverending vs. never ending

The number of errors involving these three words appears to be endless.

Never-ending is an adjective meaning having no end or interminable, as in The Earth enjoys a never-ending supply of sunlight.

Neverending (one word) is a variant of the word that increasingly appears in print, probably due to publication of the German fantasy story The Neverending Story. The German word for never-ending – “unendliche” – doesn’t have a hyphen, so perhaps the translator didn’t think one was required in English. All of this confusion is compounded by the grammatically incorrect capitalization of the in the title of the movie adaptation (The NeverEnding Story).

And the misspelling of the word as never ending just plain needs to, well, stop…

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past decade, I’ve helped more than 300 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.