How major style guides rule on "goodbye"
Once routinely hyphenated through the mid-20th century, 'goodbye' as a closed compound now dominates.
The disagreement on "goodbye" is an example of modernization of formerly hyphenated compounds, the category of style-guide differences that most often confuses copy editors and creates inconsistency across long documents. Below is a guide-by-guide breakdown, drawn directly from the published editions cited.
| Style guide | Preferred form |
|---|---|
| AP Stylebook (2024–2025 Edition) | goodbye |
| Chicago Manual of Style | goodbye |
| MLA Handbook | goodbye |
| APA Publication Manual | goodbye |
| Merriam-Webster Dictionary | goodbye (also good-bye) |
What the divergence actually means
The shift toward "goodbye" largely consolidated around 1990, when major American style guides revised their entries to reflect actual published usage. Before that point, editorial style on this word was unsettled, and house styles split along whether they prioritized etymological transparency or contemporary convention. Source: AP Stylebook (2024–2025 Edition)
The APA Publication Manual aligns with AP and Chicago on "goodbye", though APA generally addresses spelling questions only when they intersect with statistical reporting or technical psychology vocabulary. Where the manual is silent, APA defers to Merriam-Webster as its standard reference. Source: APA Publication Manual, 7th Edition
Merriam-Webster lists "goodbye (also good-bye)", which serves as the lexicographic baseline for U.S. style decisions. Because Merriam-Webster's entries reflect aggregated published usage rather than editorial preference, when a guide says "follow Merriam-Webster", as APA does, that effectively delegates the call to whichever spelling has dominated the published corpus. Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Garner's Modern English Usage classifies the "goodbye" / "good-bye" pair on its Language-Change Index, a five-stage scale measuring whether a once-disputed form has been accepted into Standard English. For modernization of formerly hyphenated compounds, Garner's typically rates the dominant form at Stage 4 ("ubiquitous but objected to by traditionalists") or Stage 5 ("fully accepted"). Source: Garner's Modern English Usage, 5th Edition
Practical guidance for editors
For working writers, the practical rule is straightforward: in journalism, follow AP; in academic writing in the humanities, follow MLA or Chicago; in social-science publishing, follow APA; in book publishing, follow Chicago. When no house style applies, Merriam-Webster's main entry is the safest default. The differences across these guides on "goodbye" reflect not disagreement about correctness but different audiences and editorial pressures.
Editorial context
The published-corpus evidence underscores the modernization of goodbye as a closed compound, with Google Books Ngrams for English revealing that solid "goodbye" overtook hyphenated "good-bye" around 1930, a shift accelerating through mid-century as compound words like today and tomorrow shed their hyphens in everyday print. This crossover reflects broader typesetting efficiencies and phonological fusion in spoken English, where the phrase "God be with ye" had long contracted into a single prosodic unit by the 16th century. Even today, n-grams from COCA confirm "goodbye" comprising over 95% of tokens in contemporary American prose, though "good-bye" lingers at about 3%, often in stylized dialogue or legal boilerplate. Consider She waved goodbye as the train pulled away, where the unhyphenated form aligns with modern editorial flow without sacrificing readability. This data-driven dominance guides copy desks away from reflexive hyphenation rooted in 19th-century norms.
Cross-references
For the dictionary entry, frequency data, and pronunciation of goodbye, see the main word page. For other style-guide spelling decisions in this category, browse all style-guide spelling rulings.