Terminology in data science and computing is messy. I came across a StackOverflow suggested edit that wanted to rewrite all OP's dataframe to data frame.

  • The R source dictionary includes dataframe, not data frame, yet a grep shows this is not the convention.

frame

  • The data.frame function includes a dot that suggests a space
  • Github fails to give conclusive result (dataframe & data frame), but makes it more complex. Pythonistas prefer dataframe. Microsoft disagrees!
  • On StackOverlow, data frame gives 76,079 results ([r] tag) and 120,469 without, dataframe has 66,709 ([r] tag) and 333,282 without.
  • Oxford English & Cambridge dictionaries see and hear no evil - neither are present

I'm inclined to say dataframe, similar to database, where emphasis is not placed on frame, but rather on data.

What is your to-go-to spelling, and why?

I wanna go with dataframe because i love it. I always write dataframe in the documents, although, I am not quite sure if is it acceptable to all or not. I think It should be together like the database you mentioned. Similar to a database a dataframe reframes the collected data and then we accessed it in a nice readable frame. So we can call it as dataframe.