Talk:great-spotted-woodpecker

RFD discussion: December 2014
With the hyphens? --Type56op9 (talk) 13:35, 1 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Er, no, delete. It does say "attributive form", but in my opinion it's a bit nonsensical even as an attributive form. Donnanz (talk) 14:18, 1 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete as with Talk:alpine-chough. Equinox ◑ 14:48, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete per Equinox. DCDuring TALK 15:27, 1 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep if attested. Talk:alpine-chough failed RFV, not RFD. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:02, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The question remains, how is this different to Great spotted woodpecker as an alternative form of great spotted woodpecker when as the first word of the sentence? Renard Migrant (talk) 23:11, 2 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep: as alternative or attributive form if it passes RfV. I think it's been held that hyphenation creates a new form of a word in a different way than capitalizing the first letter of a word at the beginning of a sentence does. Pur ple back pack 89   14:35, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * firmly believes that. And I suppose you do. But I think that's it (of people I can think of). Renard Migrant (talk) 21:34, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Looks like an RFV matter, I mean if it's really used this way then I guess keep it. It looks pretty strange to me though. Ƿidsiþ 02:24, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * "it's been held" -- by whom? I learned that one should hyphenate compound nouns when such nouns are used attributively, to make it clear how to parse the resulting phrase.  This is a contrived example, but assuming that one tells happy stories, and tends to tell them on a particular day, that day might be described as a happy-story day.  The hyphen clarifies the parsing.  Without hyphenation, the phrase is ambiguous: one cannot tell whether it is a [happy story] [day], or a [happy] [story day].
 * That's the only difference I'm aware of between and  -- the latter is the former, used attributively.  This degree of difference is roughly equivalent to the degree of difference between dog and Dog, when the latter is used at the start of a sentence, or between dog and dog's when the latter is used as a possessive modifying the following noun.
 * Delete, per Donnanz, per Equinox. Any multi-word noun takes hyphenation when used attributively.  This is a requirement of English grammar and orthography, same as capital letters at the start of sentences.  If someone wants to look up this term, and doesn't know enough about English to understand this rule, then I don't think Wiktionary is the website they need to be reading anyway.  &#8209;&#8209; Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 09:38, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Eirikr, if this is deleted without regard to passage of RfV or not, there are a lot of WORDA-WORDB and WORDA-WORDB-WORDC entries that are alt forms of WORDA WORDB and WORDA WORDB WORDC that would also have to be deleted. Pur ple back pack 89  14:25, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Quite likely. An alternative approach to simple deletion would be to convert all such entries that do do not have independently entry-worthy content to hard redirects and/or to, if possible, emend the operation of search to go directly to unhyphenated, spaced forms when a hyphenated form is entered in the search box and the hyphenated form does not exist. DCDuring TALK 15:00, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete, no different to include Great spotted woodpecker because it's capitalized in headings and as the first word of a sentence. Renard Migrant (talk) 12:12, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * : We do include various capitalizations as separate entries, don't we? We do differentiate forms written together without a space and written with a space, and use the difference in WT:COALMINE, right? I don't understand your "Great spotted woodpecker" argument. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:22, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * (Chiming in.) My understanding (which I accept might be mistaken) is that we never include different capitalization if the only difference is the initial letter, and if the term is only capitalized when occurring in a header or at the start of a sentence.  For this reason, we do not and should not have entries at  or  or.
 * Since the only difference between and  is the hyphenation, and that hyphenation only (and always) happens when this multi-word term is used as a compound modifier, and since this is a rule in common with all multi-word terms when used as compound modifiers, there is no value in having this entry.  If  and  were different in meaning or use in some other way outside the scope of this common multi-word modifier rule, then there would be value in having both as separate entries.  &#8209;&#8209; Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 19:18, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * AFAIK, it is not true that hyphenation happens always when an open compound is used as a modifier; it seems to be a matter of style and preference. More importantly, we include regularly formed inflected forms, so I see no reason to exclude attested hyphenated attributive-use variants of hyphen-free compounds. Furthermore, I find nothing in CFI to support such exclusion; such terms as not sum of parts, merely predictable from the non-hyphenated compound, but predictability alone does not suffice for deletion or else -ness forms and un- forms have to go. Moreover, great-spotted-woodpecker seems unattested; if we allow such hyphenated forms as long as attested, then we may actually document their existence; if, by contrast, we automatically delete them, no such distinction between those actually in use and those that do not seem to be actually in use can be documented. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:33, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Deleted. bd2412 T 22:35, 13 December 2014 (UTC)