Re: 3-word compound adjectives; the return of the '-'

[G. Branden Robinson]

Hi Alex,

At 2022-10-12T16:47:27+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> In a patch to linux-man@ there's a 3-word compound adjective.  I don't
> know what are the rules for such a thing, and I'd like to have some
> consistency (and correctness) in the manual pages.

Always laudable goals!  :D

> I've seen many different things in the past;:
> 
>  a) block device-based filesystems
>  b) block-device-based filesystems
>  c) block- device-based filesystems
> 
> And now I found one more
> <https://www.editorgroup.com/blog/to-hyphenate-or-not-to-hyphenate/>:
> 
>  d) block device\[en]based filesystems
> 
> Where the en dash is used to distinguish it from 'a block filesystem
> based on a device'.

Personally, I think the en dash is too much trouble to mess with.  Only
readers as meticulous as we, and those with good fonts and good
eyesight, will distinguish the en dash and hyphen glyphs.

> Which form would you recommend me to use?

Steve Izma articulated a good principle.  If thrust upon the horns of a
wordsmithing dilemma, consider recasting entirely.

That said, I'd go with "block device-based filesystems",[1] because
there is no hyphen already in the noun phrase "block device", just as
there isn't in "ice cream" (a compound word), and perhaps more on point,
as there isn't in "hot fudge sundae" (even though it is only the fudge
that is hot,[2] not the whole sundae).

Similarly, we say "thirty year-old bug" and "two-fisted drinker", but
"mother-in-law-driven divorce".  The multiplicity of hyphens in the last
case is because they're already present in the word being compounded.  A
"mother in law" would, strictly, refer to a maternal figure with an
occupation in the legal system.

I'd dig more into the underlying grammatical principles I would
articulate for these cases but I'd prefer to get this email completed
before next month.  ;-)

Regards,
Branden

[1] I prefer "file system" and "file name" to their space-free
    alternatives; I think the latter are the product of programmers
    forgetting that they're writing English nouns instead of C
    identifiers.  But I acknowledge that in many quarters those battles
    are lost.
[2] and it's chocolate sauce anyway, not true fudge--such is marketing
    honesty in the U.S.

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