I'm tossing this question out as one of those "get a feel for the
consensus" attempts. In modern English, "no one" is typically written
without a hyphen. The OED says of the hyphenated version that "...[it]
seems to have been introduced in the mid 19th century and to have
remained uncommon until the late 20th century. It remains a minority
variant." There are cases in which one could argue for a distinction
between no one's  "not one" meaning and its "none" meaning, and I could
see an argument for using a hyphen to distinguish the latter (since the
two uses would have different stress patterns):

 

We couldn't assign individual blame, since no one of them had made the
actual decision; it was a group process.

 

                                Vs.

 

We couldn't assign blame, since no one among them had made the actual
decision; it came from elsewhere. 

 

So here's the question: to what extent is "no-one" to be considered
nonstandard? By calling it "a minority variant," the OED is being
admirably descriptive, but there's a difference between saying "it's
rare" and saying "it's rare and it's considered an error." I know it
looks odd, because I'm not used to seeing it, but I learned long ago not
to let observations of frequency transform themselves into mandates
without consideration. 

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Bill Spruiell

Dept. of English

Central Michigan University


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