M.W. ist das ein typischer Germanismus, auf Englisch schreibt man das aus: hardware and software.

und auf deutsch Hard- und Software

#1 I wouldn't go quite that far - you can say "hard- and software" in English too; it's just that we use "hardware and software" much more often:

666 aus www.guardian.co.uk für "hardware and software"
51 aus www.guardian.co.uk für "hard- and software"
39 aus www.timesonline.co.uk für "hardware and software"
Es wurden keine mit Ihrer Suchanfrage - "hard- and software" site:www.timesonline.co.uk - übereinstimmenden Dokumente gefunden.
3.280 aus www.nytimes.com für "hardware and software"
7 aus www.nytimes.com für "hard- and software"

Vielen Dank!

Actually, I'd tend to agree with #1 - though perhaps my view is shaped by having a knowledge of German and encountering this on a number of occasions when proofreading texts written by Germans, which is when a sort of "over-compensatory" reaction can easily kick in :-)

Anyway, I consider it non-standard at least - as indicated by the Google stats in #2.

Ok, danke fürs Nachprüfen!
Es ist also nicht falsch, aber eher ungebräuchlich. :-)

I've also come across this type of use a lot when proofreading. Knowing that it is not wrong (I don't think the 51 uses of this example in the Guardian are non-standard) I don't like to correct it unless it sounds really funny. Unfortunately, when you read it a lot it becomes hard to judge whether it sounds funny or not :-(

All I can really add is that "hard- and software" would not get past my boss at the translation agency where I work (a fellow Brit, who checks all our translations).

I also think it's interesting that the Google search in #3 produced no hits at all on the (London) Times website and far fewer hits on the New York Times site in relation to the Guardian.

What do AE-ers and others think?

Also see:

Siehe auch: to be provided hard- and software - zu bescha...

I used to correct "hard- and software" myself until reading it quite a few times, e.g. on university computing websites where people should know how it's used :-)
I don't use it myself but, as I said, don't like correcting it when it's commonly used. But perhaps you can persuade me that it goes against all the rules of English grammar?
You would have nothing against examples like "large- and small-scale", "hard- and soft-boiled" or "two- and three-litre", though, where the components are usually separated with a hyphen?
Is it the lack of hyphen that's the problem? I'm trying to think of other examples like this with no hyphen in the original, but can't come up with any apart from "blue- and blackbirds", which gets just 2 Google hits at all. That sounds like nonsense to me, but what is the difference between that and "large- and small-scale"?

"Hard and soft-boiled" is fine, but "hard- and software" grates; it certainly seems like a Germanism to me. I would choose hardware and software.

I agree with csilla, Kinky, and Martin: hardware and software. To me it sounds not just funny, but wrong, with only the hyphen.

Just brainstorming about why ...:

Maybe this type of hyphenation works better with adjectives because the sentence stress usually doesn't fall on the adjective anyway? So in

hard- or soft-boiled eggs,

which I agree is more acceptable, the stress is on 'eggs,' and it's okay to leave out one 'boiled' because it's not the main news item?

In that case an adjective context such as 'hard- and software solutions' might be more acceptable than a noun like 'purchasing hard- and software.'

But really, not very much more acceptable, is it. Maybe instead of that, it's really more about whether the root is a freestanding word or not, to what extent it can be comfortably separated from the parts before the hyphen. With the eggs, you can in fact separate them pretty easily: How do you want your eggs boiled, hard or soft? The same is true for the scale, which can be large or small, and the liters, of which you can have two or three or any number.

But you can't really use 'ware' as a freestanding noun and still preserve any intelligible meaning; there's not really any such thing as 'ware' that can be either hard or soft.

And the birds are definitely wrong, because a 'blue 'bird (two stresses) is not necessarily a 'bluebird (one stress), and a  'black 'bird is not necessarily a 'blackbird; they could be jays, indigo buntings, crows, ravens ... (-:

I'd like my ware soft, please :-)

It sounds all wrong in "blue- and blackbirds", and maybe I have just read "hard- and software" too often - but why are native speakers using it who don't seem to be affected by German? When I go to the end of the Guardian examples it just comes down to 22, but the authors of those articles don't sound like they are talking nonsense.

Lucent and Apple are two main suppliers of the hard- and software you need to set up a wireless network http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2002/jan/...
John Davitt is a writer, broadcaster and education technology specialist. He has worked in the education sector for the last twenty-five years as an English teacher, senior manager and regional adviser with the EU Flexible Learning Project. As a journalist he writes for the UK Guardian, The Times and The Observer, with a regular feature in the Education Guardian.

There are also UK government and university websites using it. It obviously doesn't sound as unnatural to them as it should, if you see what I mean. I wonder if use is changing.

Good question.

Maybe there are subliminal suggestions being secretly broadcast from Germany that haven't yet reached this side of the Atlantic?

(-;

Yes, that sounds likely. And secret subliminal broadcasts from France may be responsible for the peculiarities of British spelling. ;-)

Honestly, "Hard- und Software" sounds just as wrong or funny in German. Every native speaker of German would understand it, but it's still wrong. You are supposed to say "Hardware und Software" or "Hardware- und Softwarefehler". De-composing composite loanwords in German is very problematic. Most speakers will accept the noun "Download", many will still tolerate "diese Datei downloaden". But "ich habe diese Datei gedownloaded/gedownloadet/downgeloadet/downgeloaded" will usually earn a frown, and you want to avoid these forms.

"Hard- und Software" only works via the literate translation "Hart- und Weichware", a common joke in recent German. If you encounter it in German texts, consider it bad style and translate it accordingly.

And please replace "literate" with "literal" in my contribution. ;-) Blackout ... ;-)

OT @Gidko: Now that you have a nice new blue nick, you can click on the little pencil icon next to the time/date stamp, and edit anything you want to yourself, as long as your post is still the last one in the thread. (-: