"Vídeo tutorial" or "videotutorial"

Question

What is the correct form of "Vídeo tutorial" or "videotutorial"?

It refers to a video to teach other people about something.

Answer 1

The prefix video- is recognized by the RAE:

video-. 1. elem. compos. U. para formar palabras referentes a la televisión. Videocinta, videofrecuencia.

When the RAE includes a compositional element, it does so to obviate the need to include every single potential combination, most especially for transparent uses of the term (that is, where the meaning is plainly evident from the parts of the word). That said, in the dictionary itself, we have videojuegos, videoclubes and videodiscos.

It's true that the usage is common in both forms (with and without spaces), but I imagine any Spanish-speaker, even upon seeing the two word form, instinctively pronounces it as a single word¹ which gives greater weight to videotutorial being the most accurate rendering.

Otherwise, the only way to have them really exist as two words is to use tutorial de vídeo_/video (cf. juego de vídeo_/video), which has been used, but is by far the least common way to refer to them.

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^{1. With very few exceptions (mainly adverbs formed with -mente), every word in Spanish has at most one stressed syllable. When a word lacks a stressed syllable (like the object pronouns), they get “absorbed” into the the next word. Given the existence of both video and vídeo, this is even easier to prove: both Latin Americans and Spaniards who say either word immediately in front of tutorial use the same stress pattern: /bi.de.o.tu.to'rial/ If we were to hear bi'deo.tu.to'rial from Latin Americans, a stronger argument could be made for the two word version.}

Answer 2

La forma de escribir correctamente este término es:

Videotutorial

Esto ya fue responidido por la RAE en su cuenta de Twitter oficial en el 2015

Saludos.

Answer 3

Ambas formas se usan de igual manera en la red, y el término parece ser todavía demasiado moderno como para estar formalmente recogido en el diccionario de la RAE.

Si seguimos el ejemplo de videojuego, que sí está recogido y en esa forma (no "video juego", escrito separado) el término correcto sería videotutorial.

En cualquier caso, no le veo problema a "video tutorial" ya que define perfectamente que se trata de un video con calidad de tutorial (es decir, que video es nombre, tutorial funciona como calificativo de ese nombre y la unidad completa tiene sentido).

Answer 4

Strictly speaking "Video tutorial" is in English (or at least it is reversing the normal order of words). The right expressions are:

Videotutorial

Tutorial en video

But this is too purist.

Answer 5

Vídeo tutorial, as videotutorial is not registered in the RAE.