Why do multiple hyphens make this phrase feel unwieldy or just plain wrong (often repeated)?
I’m writing a paper in which I refer to ” natural-language-controlled robots ” about thirty times. I can’t even lie/suprime that I’m in a hurry. Why is this sentence hyphenated?
I would write
robots controlled by natural languages,
after all I need to say it. Will this ambiguity even happen if I turn
the phrase around that
I would write it for, to avoid ambiguity? The robots are not controlled robots of the Language variety, so I need a hyphen between language and controlled. I’m hoping for it to happen because a robot is a robot of the natural variety, but to be fair they aren’t language controlled robots any more. So I need around every 3rd word.
I
know some
of the best users of natural-language robots but my post is far from perfect. When and how I spell word/phrase?
What should I think I have to do if I wanted a
hyphen attached
to an initialism and then just in one step it is an issue? The photo the dog is wearing looks very different. What is the semantically wrong sentence, without it?
I’m sure I overthinking this.
What does give up some flexibility in this, though as with other cases where there’s a degree of flexibility, a given style guide may have a firm rule that you should follow, rather than what anyone says.
When creating a compound where one or more of your elements are itself compounds (in this case natural language or natural language depending on whether you decide to hyphenate that as discussed further below), many favour using an en-dash ( – ) over a hyphen, especially if the compound is open (with a space instead of a hyphen). If you have a rule that insists against following this style, as it adds a heirarchy of “levels” to your compounds. I wouldn’t advise that following this style (there’s a precedent for following this style) as a rule would help that you do that. Alternative to natural language regulation. What can I choose, for myself, between natural nature control and natural language control?
How do I hyphenate and still be satisfied?
I would say that in this case if I’d expect people that would be reading the piece to be familiar with the phrase natural language, then I’d favour the open form: natural
language—controlled Because
I would expect many people to “pick up on” the phrase “natural language as a unit.
If I would expect a large number of readers to not be familiar with the phrase, then I’d prefer the closed form:
natural-language–controlled
Because such readers would be more likely to mis-read the “language–controlled” as a unit that is modified by natural, even with the en-dash (after all the difference between -and – is a subtle one).
I’d prefer to read the first two suggestions, but attention must be paid to likely audiences, so I’d go against my own preference if it was for a very broad audience including many unfamiliar with the term natural language.
I agree with James Stott that you can define and use the initialism NLCR, although it would be better to use an acronym in a language other than Welsh or Czech, to avoid the repeated mental delay of reading four words or letters.
For example, in an outline, you could give special meaning to a term, and thereafter use that term in places of “natural-language controlled robots”. How do I make a special definition in the following lines?
In this paper, the phrase and ordered robots will refer to robots driven by verbal orders.
In this paper, the phrase sentence-controlled robots (or equivalently, SCR) will refer to robots controlled by natural-language verbal orders.
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I don’t see any ambiguity for robots controlled by natural language. RIGHT IF TO repeatedly refer to these robots, then I think premodification is probably a good idea and then complementing the first instance of the noun phrase with an initialism.
Natural-language controlled robots (NLCR) work for example, and you can go on to refer to them as NLCR in the rest of the
text. (NLCR)
