Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 February 22

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February 22

Daisy wheel

I've been reading Typewriter and its link Daisy wheel printing. There seems no consistency about usage of "Daisy wheel", "Daisywheel" and "Daisy-wheel". Which is best English and should I edit the articles to use just one form? -- SGBailey (talk)

As far as I can tell, 'daisywheel' only occurs in the article once, as the title of an article in a linked reference (which itself also uses 'Daisywheel'). Since that is what that reference uses, you should not alter that particular instance.

In general usage, I (as a professionally trained BrE editor) would prefer 'a daisy wheel' and 'a daisy-wheel printer', but it might be that 'Daisy-wheel' was a proprietary spelling used by one or more companies (as might the other variations). Really, you should check the instances of each spelling in the article and whether they specifically relate to such proprietary spellings. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 176.24.45.226 (talk) 19:15, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

It's a general ambiguity of the English spelling of compound forms, and doesn't only affect this one word. The greatest stress being on the first stem of a compound is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for the compound to be written solidly (without an internal space or hyphen). So "typewriter" can be written solidly, but "chicken dinner" (with greatest stress on the second stem) cannot be. I would pronounce the word "daisywheel"/"daisy-wheel" with the greatest stress on the first stem, which would tend to disfavor the two-word form "daisy wheel", but I don't know if I heard that pronunciation, or just assumed it from seeing it written... AnonMoos (talk) 20:08, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Interestingly enough, Wiktionary prefers daisywheel, although this may be an overarching stylistic decision on the part of Wiktionary itself rather than something specific to this one word. GalacticShoe (talk) 20:38, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Also Collins and Cambridge dictionaries. Alansplodge (talk) 12:20, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Wiktionary is purely descriptive, so preferences are not based on stylistic considerations. The choices seem to be somewhat random:

business man  is an alternative spelling of businessman;

coalmine  is an alternative spelling of coal mine;

loan word  is an alternative spelling of loanword;

shishkebab  is an alternative spelling of shish kebab.

If based on anything, relative frequency would be the criterion.  --Lambiam 14:19, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Forgot to mention this, but Google Ngram Viewer has daisy wheel as essentially having always been most popular, with daisywheel and daisy-wheel trading popularity places in the mid-90s. GalacticShoe (talk) 03:25, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

ADA accessible

It isn't clear if a hyphen is needed in American English for the term "ADA accessible". From what I can tell, many sources in the U.S., particularly signage, do not use the hyphen, for example, "the path is ADA accessible". Should the hyphen be added anyway in a Wikipedia article about such a path or trail? Viriditas (talk) 20:20, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

 Courtesy link: Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

@Viriditas (Non-US English speaker): "ADA accessible", with or without a hyphen, needs explanation to other English speakers. Expanding ADA to its full form would give "Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 accessible", which doesn't make much sense. Another short term might be more in keeping with WP:COMMONALITY; if needed an article can include a technical description explaining what it means with reference to a specific jurisdiction's requirements. (For example, in the UK, the term "accessible" tends to be used on its own (for example, "accessible route"); were an explanation to be needed for this particular use, something along the lines of "conforming to the Equality Act 2010" might be used.) Bazza (talk) 20:33, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. Perhaps the problem is with my question. On Wikipedia, when we say something is ADA accessible, should we use a hyphen? The literature in the U.S. does not rely on the hyphen as much (I can't tell if it is 50/50 or less than that). My understanding is that Commonwealth countries are more likely to use it. Is my understanding correct? Viriditas (talk) 20:42, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

@Viriditas: I can't answer your specific question because in my country the term "ADA accessible" is not used, and the concept of an act being accessible is strange, as I said previously. MOS:HYPHEN gives some guidance for when hyphens may be used on Wikipedia, as does MOS:ENDASH. There's a suggestion (in section 3 of HYPHEN) that "ADA-accessible" could be correct as a compound modifier. I would expect to see it expanded (e.g. "conformant with accessibility requirements in the ADA", or "ADA-conformant"), or at least linked (ADA-accessible, on its first use in an article. Bazza (talk) 21:06, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

I would say that when it's used as an attribute, as in "an ADA-accessible entryway", it would require a hyphen, but as a predicate, as in "This entryway is ADA accessible" it might not... AnonMoos (talk) 21:02, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Is it my imagination, or is American English trending towards the omission of hyphens within the last two decades or so? I rarely see them used. Viriditas (talk) 21:16, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

The trend may have started earlier, as more and more publicly available writing is not generated by professional writers and also not subjected to any form of editorial control. But a quick Google search did not seem to support my suspicion. It turned up 73 occurrences of "ADA compliant np" versus 25 occurrences of "ADA-compliant np". Restricting the search to the 20th century, I found 29 occurrences of "ADA compliant np" versus merely 5 occurrences of "ADA-compliant np". So the relative contribution of hyphen-compliant compound adjectives seems to have gone up from 15% to 30%. The samples are too small, though, and Google search is too unreliable, to attach significance to this result.  --Lambiam 23:17, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Complex onsets

Are there any words in English which have complex onsets of type plosive+plosive, plosive+fricative or plosive+nasal? Such as /kt/, /tn/, /ps/ or /ks/?--40bus (talk) 22:01, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Where a plosive before an ⟨n⟩ is pronounced, as in the names Cnut and Knuth, a schwa gets inserted, so I guess that English phonotactics does not allow this, as is confirmed by the list of possible onsets in that section.  --Lambiam 23:33, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

It gets close when there is an initial unstressed syllable, as in catenary, connection, percentage or Cassandra. In casual speech, the schwa can be absent, with nothing voiced until the second consonant or syllable. -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 12:04, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Are there any words in English with onsets /ks/ or /ps/? These two clusters are easy to pronounce. And why English does not pronounce K in e.g. knife unlike every other Germanic language? --40bus (talk) 12:08, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

They're easy once you know how. I had a friend in grad school by the name of Xenia. Most people pronounced her name with three syllables, /kəˈsɛn.jə/. It irritated me (don't know about her) because it really didn't seem that hard to me to say /ˈksɛn.jə/, but on reflection I had sort of practiced these clusters at some point in the past, and Americans who hadn't seemed unable to pronounce it. --Trovatore (talk) 20:56, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

See Silent k and g and Apheresis (linguistics). Alansplodge (talk) 12:14, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Pssst! -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 12:50, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

And there any words in English which have affricates or /h/ in complex onsets? --40bus (talk) 14:11, 23 February 2024 (UTC)