Grammar Guardian: Turnaround is a Noun
Turnaround is a noun or an adjective, not a verb, so its use in the phrase “plan to turnaround their troubled companies” is incorrect. Turn around, with a space between the words, is correct when seeking to use the verb form of the phrase. The sentence should read, “plan to turn around their troubled companies….”
Turnaround has a variety of meanings, but it’s used most commonly in the phrase “turnaround time,” or the period needed to prepare an organization of some sort (whether a ship, an airplane, a factory, a company, or so forth) to alter or reverse direction, whether literally or figuratively.
A turnaround can also be a path, road, or space made available for vehicles to use to reverse direction, and turnaround is used in music, the film industry, and elsewhere as a specialized term but, as far as I can find, always, again, as a noun or an adjective (“turnaround passage,” “turnaround deal,” etc.).
Thus, in this example, a few paragraphs below the misuse illustrated above, “turnaround” is used correctly as an adjective modifying the word “plans.”
Just FYI, I often see a similar problem with the phrases everyday (an adjective meaning “common,” “unexceptional” or “daily”) versus every day (the adjective “every” + the noun “day” meaning “ocurring daily”). So,”the rising of the sun in the east is an everyday event” (“everyday” modifies “event”), but “the sun rises every day.”
drupagliassotti @ February 15, 2009