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Reply to message from Harry Binswanger ≪FONT size=1>
mailto:hb@xxxxxxxxhb@xxxxxxxx
≪are multiple noun-pile-ups, as in adminspeak: "the
technology-information-system-facilitation-personnel" (i.e., the
secretaries)≫
Ouch! yes, well, adminspeak is generally an abomination, and that example
takes some kind of (inedible) cake. Not to mention being one of those
pretentious occupational titles (my favorite is "vertical-transportation
engineer" for elevator operator).
One nicety is that sometimes, if the elements are not all on an equal
footing, you want to use the en, or nut, dash in place of the hyphen for one.
Examples: non<1/n>English-speaking residents; the Chicago<1/n>New
York route (note that the nut can be used even before an open compound; one
would never hyphenate "New York," even when used attributively), the
Lloyd-George<1/n>Winston Churchill talks (Fowler, interestingly enough,
used this particular example to proclaim the need for another kind of hyphen in
English, not being aware--as few beside typesetters are--of the existence of the
en dash).
The hyphen is most often needed when two nouns jointly modify a third,
though there are some compounds that are just never hyphenated: high school is
one, and chemical compounds are a whole class that are not (never
"sodium-chloride solution"). There is also a general tendency in English for
words to start out separate ("open compounds"), get hyphenated, and then move to
being one word (solid compounds): "online" is a good example. And the Brits are
given to hyphenating where Americans would not, and keeping the hyphen after
Americans have closed up the compound.
This could be a whole chapter in my long-in-progress systematic
grammar.
Patricia M. godfrey
mailto:PMGodfrey@xxxxxxxxPMGodfrey@xxxxxxxx
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