[viff-devel] Off topic question "multiparty" or "multi-party"

[Mikkel Krøigård]

Quoting Ivan Bjerre Damgård <ivan at cs.au.dk>:

> Quoting Tord Ingolf Reistad <tordr at stud.ntnu.no>:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> An off topic question about how to write "Secure Multiparty  
>> Compuations", should it be "multiparty" or "multi-party"
>>
>> The front page of VIFF.dk uses "multi-party", but resent papers  
>> such as "Multiparty computation goes live" uses the other version.  
>> So which should we go for, which should be the standard?
>
> David Chaum once told me that it's "multiparty" and he's American,  
> so I guess he should know..

Here's an argument that doesn't involve having a pocket American (no  
offense to mr. Chaum of course): A quick look at the dictionary  
reveals that you can find the word "multiparty" there (although it has  
a political meaning). You could suspect that the spelling multi-party  
would be fine as well, and maybe it is, but I'm guessing it would not  
be standard, since other words starting with "multi" do not use the  
hyphen: multicolo(u)red, multifaceted, multinational and so on.