Table of Contents
Introduction - One Word or Two?
Is ‘thank you’ one word or two?
It can be difficult to know to how to write this term is it thank you, thankyou or even thank-you? Often all three variants are used. So which one is correct to use? We can help you work out which to use.
Thank you when written as two words is a verb phase, therefore the verb is ‘to thank’, with a direct object which being ‘you’. Giving the meaning the act of thanking someone. An example of this would be:
- Thank you for feeding my cat.
We can also thank you as a noun, so something given as thanks for instance:
- I’ll send my friend some flowers as a thank you.
Or we can use it as an adjective to adapt another noun such as:
- I received a thank you card from my manager.
So in this context, you write ‘thank you’ as two words.
A One Worded Thankyou
Writing ‘thankyou’ as a single word version until quite recently was commonly considered as an error. But thankyou written as one word is now much more commonplace, in particular as a noun or an adjective. For instance:
- I’ll send your mum some flowers as a thankyou.
- I received a thankyou note in the post today.
Sometimes ‘thank-you’ carries a hyphen when using it as a noun or adjective. So we would rewrite the examples above as follows:
- I’ll send your mum some flowers as a thank-you.
- I received a thank-you note in the post today.
But it worth noting you can’t use these varieties of the term as a verb and do not write ‘thankyou’ or ‘thank-you’ in formal writing.
I Just Want to Know - is it One Word or Two??
In nearly all cases ‘thank you’ is written as two words. This will apply whether you use it as a verb phrase, a noun or an adjective. The other two variants Thankyou and thank-you are also are achieving wide spread acceptance.
So how you write the term ‘thank you’ depends on how you want to use it, to summarise:
- As a verb phrase or in formal writing, always use two words, such as thank you for your card.
- As a noun or an adjective, it can be written as two words, as a single word, or using a hyphen.
In short, ideally and where you can use ‘Thank You’ as it it can be used and is accepted everywhere.
