The Missing Space in Teen Patti

“We played Teen Patti after dinner” and “The update changed the Teen Patti Master lobby” could come from the same conversation. In the first sentence, the speaker could be talking about a deck of cards on a kitchen table. In the second, there has to be a piece of software. Try adding “Master” to the first sentence and you have changed more than the spelling.

For someone editing a caption, Teenpatti Master presents a small puzzle. The joined spelling looks plausible, especially next to the web address, where the words run together. But the publisher prints Teen Patti Master with a space between Teen and Patti in its main heading. That is the form to use when naming the app in your own prose. An address without spaces is a poor guide to how a name appears in print.

The trickier edit is deciding when to leave the brand out. If a photograph shows three people holding cards, “a game of Teen Patti” describes the scene. Unless the photograph also shows the app, adding a product name would tell readers something the picture does not establish. Conversely, calling a screenshot simply “Teen Patti” leaves a reader guessing which interface they are looking at.

There is one good reason to keep somebody else’s spelling: a quotation. If the wording of a message is the point of a story, reproduce it as written. Use the standard name in the next sentence. The reader can then distinguish the words on the screen from the editor’s identification.

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