A pressing style question for biz reporters

This was in the Bloomberg News weekly notes this week:

Q. What’s our style for writing the word oom-pah, or is it oom-pah-pah?
A. This word isn’t in The Bloomberg Way nor the AP Stylebook, so the next reference to check is Webster’s New World College Dictionary. It gives the spelling as oompah, with no hyphen and one pah. {NSE OOMPAH<GO>} shows that most stories using oompah referred to music in German beer halls.

One Bloomberg News reporter wrote in to state, ” Those are oompah loompahs in your picture, not an oompah band. PS not sure we have a ruling on oompah loompah oompah bands.”

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.