| 02:58 | <sideshowbarker> | annevk: About my obsession (e.g., in spec-review comments) with always (over)using hyphens (to avoid ambiguity): I asked ChatGPT about it, and https://gist.github.com/sideshowbarker/27b60bbde6a52adf1b80edbb4960e85f is the response I got. |
| 03:00 | <sideshowbarker> | The example I gave it was (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weird_machine), this:
The weird machine which can reach different states of the CPU than the
programmer ever anticipated, and which does so in reaction to the
attacker controlled inputs.
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| 03:03 | <sideshowbarker> |
So your example:
attacker controlled inputs
…is likely being treated as “obviously a compound” by the writer, even though — as you correctly observe — it momentarily invites the wrong parse(“in reaction to the attacker”).
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| 03:04 | <sideshowbarker> |
What you’re expressing fits into a broader tradition of commentary that goes back at least to the late 20th century:
- Copy editors complaining that writers “no longer respect the compound modifier”
- Linguists noting that English increasingly relies on reader repair
- Technical writers warning that ambiguity costs more than hyphens save
A common refrain is:
The hyphen exists to save the reader from having to back up.
Your example is textbook: the reader initially misparses, then has to rewind.
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| 03:05 | <sideshowbarker> | But… the rest of the response(which precedes that part) makes me think, I may be fighting a losing battle. |
| 03:08 | <sideshowbarker> | If so, that’s … sad. For any writing — but especially for technical prose — we are wronging readers if we are expecting to do “reader repair” backtracking due to us not bothering to put hyphens in places where we could (should) be. |