Examples “I’m-A” or “I’m-a”? “A-Gonna” or a-Gonna", “A-Changing or a-Changing”? Normally when a hyphen is present, we treat words as if they are separate. Is this an exception?
In the cases that you cite “a” is not a component (word) in a compound word,.
If it were a word in a compound word and that word was the indefinite article “a” then it should be capitalized as such.
These cases are described here
https://ygdp.yale.edu/phenomena/a-prefixing
As a prefix, it is the first letter in a word and should be capitalized as such.
Thanks! It’s just been bugging me for years and I never could find anything by searching the internet. I never even realized it was actually not a compound, that’s fascinating.
What about “Ring-a-ling”? Do you think “Ring-A-Ling”, “Ring-a-Ling” or “Ring-a-ling”?
https://musicbrainz.org/edit/102757539
I would not consider this compound word but an onomatopoeia …
… like …
… and would capitalize it as one word:
Ring-a-ling
Thanks. The more I thought about it as one word, this also made sense to me.
I believe the Thelonious Monk composition Rhythm-a-ning should follow the same pattern. (Unfortunately, the bulk of the recordings are not currently capitalized that way.)