“Bylaws” or “By-laws”?

Posted on February 23, 2008 by Ken Adams

Bylaws is spelled both with and without a hyphen. For example, Black’s Law Dictionary gives a definition for bylaw but notes that it’s sometimes spelled by-law.

So which is preferable?

It appears that bylaw is gaining the upper hand. For example, the 1915 edition of Robert’s Rules of Order Revised used by-laws but the current edition, Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised, uses bylaws. And althought its predecessor used by-laws, the new Massachusetts Business Corporation Act, effective 2004, uses bylaws.

So I say by-laws is dead. Long live bylaws!

Of course, lawyers are behind the times, as usual. Last month, 626 contracts filed as “material contracts” on the SEC’s EDGAR system used by-law; only 135 used bylaw.

But note that there are other wrinkles to bylaws. Here’s what Garner’s Modern American Usage has to say:

Both the spelling and the sense differ on the two sides of the Atlantic. In AmE, bylaws are most commonly a corporation’s administrative provisions that are either attached to the articles of incorporation or kept privately. In BrE, bylaws are regulations made by a local authority or corporation, such as a town or a railway.

The spelling without the -e- is preferred in AmE. Though etymologically inferior, byelaw (sometimes hyphenated) is common in BrE.

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

  • steven pappas

    Ken: I often see By-Laws, with a capital L after the hyphen. Is there any support for that usage? I would dare say that the majority of drafters capitalize laws when they use the hypen approach but I have never understood why. Steve

  • Ken Adams

    Steve: You make an interesting point that requires two answers.

    First, as a general matter don’t capitalize textual references to bylaws—they’re simply a kind of document, not a title. See MSCD 13.31.

    Second, if you were stating by-laws (with a hyphen) in a title, according to the Chicago Manual of Style you shouldn’t capitalize the l in laws. See CMOS 8.168–170. For one thing, the by is a prefix that couldn’t stand by itself as a word. But more to the point, I wouldn’t use the hyphen.

    Ken

  • http://www.FiduciaryGuidanceCounsel.com Peter Gulia

    Here’s a style rule that I often apply to resolve a choice of spellings. If the writing uses a word in the same sense that the relevant statute uses it, spell it the way the statute does.

    For example, in a writing that refers to an SEC-registered investment adviser, I spell it “adviser” (not “advisor”) because that’s how the U.S. statute spells it.

    Using a rule of this kind sometimes results in a spelling that’s now out of favor. But there’s a little value in falling in with the statute. And if a writing includes goes back and forth between original text and quotations, using one spelling might avoid an unnecessary distraction.

  • Cynthia

    Thanks for the information and comments. Good rule of thumb about following a statutes use. I will do that unless the statute clearly just misspelled the word and no one caught it before publication.

  • pat

    if your parliamentary authority is the current edition of Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised as it
    should be stated – in the 11th edition published last year, there is no hyphen in bylaws. even in the
    1990 edition there was no hyphen. that is the earliest edition i have, having discarded the ones before
    that. pat