June 23rd, 2022

Replying to a tweet from @simonw

If used as an adjective, a hyphen helps disambiguate where to split the three words: “command-line tool.”

But used as a noun, a hyphen isn’t needed: “tool for the command line.”

Same with “front-end developer” and “the front end.”

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Responses

Simon Willison

I think that’s the right answer, but having those two forms in the same piece of documentation really bugs me for some reason - it feels so inconsistent! I think I’m letting my programmer brain override my wiring brain, like how I hate (including the full stop in parentheses.)

Jeremy Keith

Your challenge—should you choose to accept it—is to rewrite the documentation in such a way that the phrase is only ever used as an adjective or only ever used as a noun. 🙂 adactio.com/notes/19214

Chun Ly, Ph.D.

Yea, adj vs noun is how I’ve always done it/taught like “high-redshift galaxies” and “at high redshifts”

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