Relevant problem: how should one handle higher-order hyphenation? E. g., imagine if one is talking about cost-effective measures, but has the measures’ effectiveness specifically relative to marginal costs in mind. Building it up, we have “marginal-cost effectiveness”, and then we want to turn that whole phrase into a compound modifier. But “marginal-cost-effective measures” looks very awkward! We’ve effectively hyphenated “marginal cost effectiveness”, no hyphen: within the hyphenated expression, we have no way to avoid the ambiguities between a hyphen and a space!
It becomes especially relevant in the case of longer composite modifiers, like your “responsive-but-not-manipulative” example.
Can we fix that somehow?
One solution I’ve seen in the wild is to increase the length of the hyphen depending on its “degree”, i. e. use an en dash in place of a hyphen. Example: “marginal-cost–effective measures”. (On Windows, can be inserted by typing 0150 on the keypad while holding ALT. See methods for other platforms here.)
In practice you basically never go beyond the second-degree expressions, but there’s space to expand to third-degree expressions by the use of an even-longer em dash (—, 0151 while holding ALT).
Seems like brackets would remove this problem, at the cost of being highly nonstandard and perhaps jarring to some people.
I was jarred and grossed out the first time I encountered brackets used this way. But at the end of the day, I think 20th century writing conventions just aren’t quite good enough for what we want to do on LW. (Relatedly, I have higher tolerance for jargon than a lot of other people.)
Caveat: brackets can be great for increasing the specificity of what you are able to say, but I sometimes see the specificity of people’s thoughts fail to keep up with the specificity of their jargon and spoken concepts, which can be grating.
I agree.
Relevant problem: how should one handle higher-order hyphenation? E. g., imagine if one is talking about cost-effective measures, but has the measures’ effectiveness specifically relative to marginal costs in mind. Building it up, we have “marginal-cost effectiveness”, and then we want to turn that whole phrase into a compound modifier. But “marginal-cost-effective measures” looks very awkward! We’ve effectively hyphenated “marginal cost effectiveness”, no hyphen: within the hyphenated expression, we have no way to avoid the ambiguities between a hyphen and a space!
It becomes especially relevant in the case of longer composite modifiers, like your “responsive-but-not-manipulative” example.
Can we fix that somehow?
One solution I’ve seen in the wild is to increase the length of the hyphen depending on its “degree”, i. e. use an en dash in place of a hyphen. Example: “marginal-cost–effective measures”. (On Windows, can be inserted by typing 0150 on the keypad while holding ALT. See methods for other platforms here.)
In practice you basically never go beyond the second-degree expressions, but there’s space to expand to third-degree expressions by the use of an even-longer em dash (—, 0151 while holding ALT).
Though I expect it’s not “official” rules at all.
Seems like brackets would remove this problem, at the cost of being highly nonstandard and perhaps jarring to some people.
I was jarred and grossed out the first time I encountered brackets used this way. But at the end of the day, I think 20th century writing conventions just aren’t quite good enough for what we want to do on LW. (Relatedly, I have higher tolerance for jargon than a lot of other people.)
Caveat: brackets can be great for increasing the specificity of what you are able to say, but I sometimes see the specificity of people’s thoughts fail to keep up with the specificity of their jargon and spoken concepts, which can be grating.
Could refer to them in writing as “MC-effectiveness measures”