The final chapter summarises the most important aspects of the book - among them, the following findings: the spelling of English compounds is not chaotic and actually governed by a large number of variables which are statistically significant when tested individually. Possibly, this abundance of underlying principles is perceived as a superficial lack of patterns by many language users. Similarly, no support was found for the hypothesis that compounds start their life open, then go through a hyphenated stage and finally become solid. Nor could the third general view in the literature be confirmed: in the dataset under consideration, hyphenation was not more common in British English than in American English.