In most of the proposed clustering algorithms for wireless ad hoc networks, the cluster-heads form a dominating set in the network topology. A variant of dominating set which is more suitable for cluster formation is the weakly-connected dominating set (WCDS). We propose an area based distributed algorithm for WCDS formation with time and message complexity O(n). In this Area algorithm, we partition the wireless nodes into different areas, use some deterministic criteria to select the nodes for the WCDS in each area and adjust the area borders by adding additional nodes to the final WCDS. The effectiveness of our algorithm is confirmed through analysis and comprehensive simulation study. Keywords- Wireless ad hoc networks; clustering; dominating set; weakly-connected dominating set; distributed algorithm