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

[Alejandro Colomar]

Hi Branden!

On 10/12/22 17:52, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> 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

It's very nice to read this!!  :D

BTW, thanks a lot for all the help these years.  We finally got 
man-pages-6.0!  :-)

> > 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.

If I find some case that I can't recast easily, I think I'll go for the 
preciseness and logic of en-dashes combined with hyphens, as Tadziu 
defended.  Readers as meticulous as we with good fonts and eyesight will 
certainly appreciate that.  And less careful readers won't care so much, 
but we also won't care so much about their carelessness, so not an issue. :p

> 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

Heh!  Dave caught a funny bug in this one, which supports the idea of 
being precise even if it's not always necessary by language rules.

> "mother-in-law-driven divorce".  The multiplicity of hyphens in the last

So I'd write either "divorce driven by the mother-in-law" or 
"mother-in-law\[en]driven divorce", depending on how nicely the first 
one fits.

> 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.

It seems to be lost, according to man-pages(7):

   Preferred terms
       The  following table lists some preferred terms to use in
       man pages, mainly to ensure consistency across pages.
       Term                 Avoid using              Notes
       ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
       bit mask             bitmask
       built‐in             builtin
       Epoch                epoch                    For the UNIX
                                                     Epoch
                                                     (00:00:00, 1
                                                     Jan 1970 UTC)
       filename             file name
       filesystem           file system

and to current use in the project:

$ grep -rn 'file system' man* | wc -l
4
$ grep -rn 'filesystem' man* | wc -l
1166
$ grep -rn 'file name' man* | wc -l
18
$ grep -rn 'filename' man* | wc -l
172

$ grep -rn 'file-system' man* | wc -l
7
$ grep -rn 'file-name' man* | wc -l
1

> [2] and it's chocolate sauce anyway, not true fudge--such is marketing
>      honesty in the U.S.

Cheers,

Alex

--
<http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

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