[whatwg] language quibbles: either works Re: same-origin versus same origin

[Adam Barth]

From Strunk and White's The Elements of Style (Chapter 3):

"When two or more words are combined to form a compound adjective, a
hyphen is usually required."

The relevant example provided is as follows:

"He belonged to the leisure class and enjoyed leisure-class pursuits."

Here "class" is a noun, but is hyphenated because "leisure-class" is a
compound adjective modifying "pursuits."  Notice the hyphen is not
used in the beginning of the sentence because leisure is modifying
class (and the two are not used as a adjective phrase).

This appears to support Ian's understanding of English grammar.

Adam


2008/7/5 Křištof Želechovski <giecrilj at stegny.2a.pl>:
> Connect adjectives with a hyphen, do not connect an adjective to a noun.
> This rule is no rocket science and it is common knowledge and its usage is
> much broader than English (although there are languages that prefer to glue
> adjectives together).  Do you disagree?
>
> Chris
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: whatwg-bounces at lists.whatwg.org
> [mailto:whatwg-bounces at lists.whatwg.org] On Behalf Of Charles McCathieNevile
> Sent: Saturday, July 05, 2008 6:52 PM
> To: Ian Hickson; Anne van Kesteren
> Cc: WHATWG
> Subject: [whatwg] language quibbles: either works Re: same-origin versus
> same origin
>
> On Sat, 05 Jul 2008 03:17:50 -0400, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 4 Jul 2008, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
>>>
>>> http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/ has some usage of "same-origin" while
>>> it seems that the intention is for it to be all "same origin". I'd
>>> prefer if it was all "same origin" (apart from tokens, of course) as
>>> that's what I/I'll use in XLMHttpRequest et al.
>>
>> The intent is to use "same-origin" when the term is used as an adjective
>> and "same origin" when it is used as a noun phrase. That, as far as I
>> understand, is correct English grammar.
>
> Actually I am pretty sure that either are correct in the context of an
> attempt to describe the usage that constitutes "english grammar". English
> grammar, unlike many other languages, does not have a formal definition,
> nor any body capable of making one. This lack of formal precision is a
> drawback when using it to describe technical things - but one
> counterbalanced by the fact that many of the people who want to understand
> the descriptions have some level of familiarity with it.
>
> cheers
>
> Chaals
>
> --
> Charles McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
>     je parle français -- hablo espanol -- jeg larer norsk
> http://my.opera.com/chaals   Try Opera 9.5: http://www.opera.com
>
>