Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 July 16

= July 16 =

Hyphen in object–verbal noun compound
Two part question: (1) Is sex worker an object–verbal noun compound? (2) Is it a style practice to hyphenate sex worker in phrases like "a transgender sex worker" for clarity? Something very similar was answered before (2011 RD archive) but I want to make sure I have this correct. Thanks in advance. – Reidgreg (talk) 11:11, 16 July 2018 (UTC)


 * No, it's not. If you look at the examples on that page, an egg-beater beats eggs; an alien-lover loves aliens, etc. A sex worker does not "work sex"; "sex worker" is made up of two nouns, where the first noun tells you what kind of the second noun it is (like "apple juice"). Incidentally "Object–verbal noun compound" gives me three google hits, one of which is this page, and another of which seems to be referring to our Hyphen article -- it's clearly not a term in common use. (If you still need an answer to your second question, the same article's section on compound modifiers is the place to look, but really there's not much more to it than that people will tend to add a hyphen if they think it will reduce confusion. You can follow any style guide you wish.) HenryFlower 13:30, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Also spelled "egg beater" and "eggbeater". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:14, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Not eggbeater in British English Bazza (talk) 16:59, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * But panelbeater as the occupation and the workshop premises in New Zealand. Akld guy (talk) 22:52, 16 July 2018 (UTC)


 * To answer question (2): transgender-sex worker, or transgender sex-worker, depending on the meaning intended, for clarity as recommended on WP by MOS:HYPHEN. Bazza (talk) 16:59, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Ah, thanks. Unfortunately hyphen and MOS:HYPHEN are a bit spare on examples hyphenating the right-most words. – Reidgreg (talk) 02:33, 17 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I suppose "transgender-sex sex-worker" is possible, although most references to such would be more crudely worded.- Donald Albury 16:21, 17 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I think that would be transgender transgender-sex worker. Bazza (talk) 17:00, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I think that some sex workers could be said to "work sex", in a very informal sense like "work that thing". (Though I would not want to generalize that for all sex workers.)  The clarity issue seems to be whether the hyphen helps lower-literacy readers enough to justify any perceived awkwardness of style. – Reidgreg (talk) 14:08, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Agree with Henry Flower. The usage is quite distinct (workin' that thang or not, Bazza!). The "worker" construction here is the same as in "steel worker", "factory worker", "office worker", "tech worker", etc. There can be crossover cases.  A steel worker is a factory worker who works in "steel", a stand-in word for "the steel industry"), as a sex worker works in sex (the sex industry). A steel-worker (hyphenated) would be a blacksmith, someone who literally works steel into shape.  So, some steel workers are also steel-workers, less so the more fabrication processes become mechanized and automated. A lot of steel workers today are not steel-workers at all but are more along the lines of electro-mechanical engineers, running and repairing the machines, while others are materials- and product-hauling manual laborers. "Factory worker", "office worker", and "dock worker" are a little different, an "[environment] [occupation]" rather than "[industry] [occupation]" construction; more like "field laborer", "ER doctor", and "beat cop".  "Knowledge[-]worker" is an edge case; it arguably  an object–verbal noun compound, a worker of knowledge, since many knowledge[-]workers are not in a "knowledge industry" (which doesn't really seem to be a term) but are doing knowledge work in any industry (or sometimes outside of any, but feeding off several). However, it rarely seems to be hyphenated, and the fully compounded "knowledgeworker" barely exists (contrast bricklayer, fishmonger, etc.). The real mystery is why we don't have "wheatfarmer" or "wheat-farmer", etc., but tend to split such terms up as "wheat farmer".  English isn't entirely regular on this stuff, at least not in one direction. One gets that hyphenation of object–verbal noun compounds is rather optional, at least for occupational terms, while avoiding hyphenation for things that don't qualify is not optional ("hypervisor-sysadmin" and "divorce-attorney" just don't cut it). The hyphenation lossage in cases that could qualify for it is probably simply a matter of the punctuation hostility of several forms of writing, including med/sci/tech, governmentese, marketing, and news journalism.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:36, 19 July 2018 (UTC)


 * The term "Object–verbal noun compound" is new to me. I looked it up, and read: "When an object is compounded with a verbal noun...." The term "verbal noun" is also new to me, but the explanation makes more sense than does its name. I believe that "deverbal noun" would be a more standard term. Anyway, worker is deverbal; the verb is work; and if the fact that it's deverbal is crucial, then the question is one of the relationship between sex and working. As pointed out above, sex isn't a complement of work. My gut feeling is that, the verb work aside, a sex worker is just a kind of worker (cf the inanimate equivalent, a sex robot) and thus that we're looking at an attributive compound. But the criteria for a subordinate compound in Bisetto and Scalise's influential paper are a bit hard to grasp for my currently sleepy brain; maybe the compound is subordinate (aka subordinative) instead. (We can infer that Bisetto and Scalise's classification is taken seriously from, for example, the inclusion of this chapter of theirs in a recent and authoritative handbook.) -- Hoary (talk) 09:40, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Much thanks! I continue to be amazed by the knowledge base of this forum's volunteers. – Reidgreg (talk) 12:00, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Hyphens for this sentence?
I'm working on this mess of a sentence "Initial attempts to reduce the number of components required to be transfected by combining the crRNA and tracrRNA into a single chimera (single guide RNA; sgRNA) showed that this was possible but efficiency depended on the length of the chimera (Jinek et al. 2012)".

Should "required to be transfected" be hyphenated (required-to-be-transfected)? Thanks --185.230.100.66 (talk) 23:45, 16 July 2018 (UTC)


 * No, unless you want to rephrase it "required-to-be-transfected components". Clarityfiend (talk) 00:38, 17 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Why not just "components requiring transfection"? --76.69.47.228 (talk) 08:26, 17 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks; that's much better than what I had. --129.215.47.59 (talk) 10:45, 17 July 2018 (UTC)