The Democratic National Convention begins on Monday in Chicago, the second and final national party convention before November’s presidential election. The Republicans held their convention last month during a historic week in American politics: The Saturday before the convention, someone attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump, and a few days after the convention concluded, President Joe Biden announced he would not seek reelection.

And just to add to the historic news: Conventions are typically where a presidential nominee becomes official, but the Democratic National Committee held its vote early. That means Vice President Kamala Harris is already the party's official nominee.

(Need help covering this year’s unprecedented election season? ICYMI last week, we’re expanding our style guide with research-backed election advice, and qualifying newsrooms can access it for free thanks to the Knight Foundation.)

Politics aside, there is a feature of the Democratic convention that’s distinguished it from its Republican equivalent in the past: superdelegates, which are delegates who are not bound to vote for a nominee based on the results of states’ presidential primaries and caucuses. Democrats amended their rules for superdelegates in 2018, and now they’re officially called “automatic delegates.”

But today we’re focusing on the “super” part of “superdelegate.” Lots of people ask Stylebot questions about when a word like “superdelegate” is one or two words, or whether it should be hyphenated. As you’ve probably figured out by this point, you should use one word for “superdelegate.” And this is true for most words beginning with the prefix “super.”

But you’ll need the space bar for another feature of American politics: super PAC, which doesn’t need a hyphen or a capital “s” in “super.”

Oh, and just because the Democratic National Convention is sometimes shortened as DNC, avoid using that abbreviation in order to avoid confusion with the Democratic National Committee.

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