Talk:writing as one word

RFV discussion: May–June 2019
Can a gerund be straightforwardly considered as a noun? In any case, I don't see many hits on GB. Canonicalization (talk) 09:51, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * No. Although can also be a straightforward noun (as in “my writing is as bad as my spelling”), here we clearly have a verb form; you can’t say, *“my writing as one word was marked as an error”. Additionally, I think the concept is typically applied in questions like “should a posto be written as one word or two?”, so IMO the verb  is a more useful translation hub. BTW, isn’t this rather a Tea room topic?  --Lambiam 16:13, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't see a problem with "writing as one word" being a noun phrase, meaning the action of writing (something) as one word. I don't think we have a "Noun phrase" PoS, though, do we? So I guess it is just "Noun". If the entry was intended to define a verb then presumably the lemma would be "write as one word". As far as I can tell, the translations, which seem to be the only reason for this entry's existence, are nouns meaning "the act/action of ...", which to me is consistent with the lemma being "writing" and not "write". Mihia (talk) 20:58, 27 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I see no problem with “writing something as one word” being a noun phrase, but “writing as one word” is weird (“For his posing as a lawyer and writing as one word he was sentenced to 12 years in prison”). If the purpose is giving the translations, I expect very few people will use this collocation as a search term. --Lambiam 05:34, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I think this entry (and the French translation included therein) is nonsense - or at least awkward - and I want to see it deleted. I think it failing the attestation requirement will be the easiest way of accomplishing that. Canonicalization (talk) 18:56, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I don’t think the French translation is nonsense, but I have no objections to this entry being deleted, since (for the reasons I have stated) I think it is useless. If it is deleted, we should also delete writing as separate words. --Lambiam 11:55, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
 * In actual use, an object for "writing" would usually be given, but to me the omission of generic objects and subjects in lemmas seems permissible or even desirable. I don't agree, though, that "writing as one word" is always weird in real use: Google search throws up some examples such as: "Hyphenated spelling is considered an alternative to writing as one word" and "rules for writing as one word", both of which seem OK to me. Mihia (talk) 19:23, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * This is an ambiguous term. What about bath as one word? At the very least, why isn't this at [[write as one word]], which at least is in lemma form? DCDuring (talk) 20:06, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * As I mentioned, I assume it is not write as one word because the whole purpose of the entry is to host translations of the noun phrase "writing (something) as one word", not the verb phrase. (I'm not particularly arguing that this purpose is justified.) "bath as one word" does not make any sense to me. I don't understand the connection. Mihia (talk) 20:12, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Consider 'bath' as one word and 'writing' as another. or vice versa.
 * I found this entry and this discussion header confusing because of ambiguity. Because we don't have definitions for terms that are "translations hubs", any ambiguity of the term cannot be resolved without departing from that underlying concept and making the entry one that is subject to RfD. The problem can't be addressed with the use of either. Perhaps a term like spelling solid is less ambiguous.
 * I find it preposterous that we should allow translation hubs to exist for non-lemma forms when we do not allow translations for non-lemma forms of real entries, say coming to grief/come to grief. DCDuring (talk) 20:42, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * In English these verb forms are ambiguous. For many languages, the translations of the past participles will not be the same as for the gerunds, the latter being less predictable ( – ;  –  ).  --Lambiam 11:55, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

The French, German, and Russian translations could easily be modified to fit with a verbal. In the case of French, would actually make more sense than **écriture en un mot.

I can't judge about the others. Hungarian apparently as a verb egybeír so it would work there too. Canonicalization (talk) 20:42, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Note that the French translation given is ”écriture en un seul mot“. For the verb, I would use ”écrire comme un seul mot“. Don’t ask me why, but it “feels” better. --Lambiam 11:55, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

In languages that are more inclined than English to write things as solid (e.g. German or Hungarian), writing elements of a phrase together or separately can carry just as much importance as the difference between staring and starring in English. Even if it's not a big issue in English, it may well be a pivotal spelling difference in other languages. The entry is basically about this feature of spelling, cf. capitalization. Even if I can readily accept that it sounds unusual in English, no one would want to rename the entry on capitalization to capitalize as the primary term for this concept, or in the same vein, change the term for this spelling form. After all, it's a translation hub, so the way an English translation sounds needn't be the main factor. The English translation may not be well attested, due to the spelling system of English, but the concept can be easily attested in any language listed among the Translations. (Try Google searches for them, with quotation marks around the terms if they have more than one element; some even have their own entries in their native Wiktionary.)

On the other hand, I have no objection to renaming it to solid script or something else. The point is that the English-language Wiktionary shouldn't fail users who would like to find translations for this concept, no matter what leads them to this page (e.g. another language translation, "What links here", etc.). Google search has been around for 20+ years, the wiki system is based on hyperlinks, so we need to consider all the users who might find this content in any other way than typing any English translation of the term. Adam78 (talk) 22:34, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I think that it is a fallacy that a dictionary "shouldn't fail users who would like to find translations for [a/any] concept". Dictionaries are about words. The number of words (or sentences, paragraphs, chapters, or volumes required to convey a concept is highly variable, depending on the language, the speaker, the hearer, the extent of common experience, etc. If translation hubs are based solely on this notion, they should be eliminated.
 * In this case it is not any weirdness in the sound of the entry title in English that troubles me and illustrates a weakness in the translation-hub concept, it is its ambiguity.
 * Remember if you would that there is no rule against using a transparent, SoP multiword English expression to define an expression that is a term, whether a single word or an idiom in an other language. There is also no assurance that some defining such a term in one language would use the same definition as another person defining a similar term in another language. That is, they would not know to look for the translation hub.
 * Also, I don't understand the reasoning that goes from "Google search has been around for 20+ years" and "the wiki system is based on hyperlinks" to "we need to consider all the users who might find this content in any other way than typing any English translation of the term". There are obviously at least one or two missing steps which my mind doesn't find obvious. DCDuring (talk) 23:00, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

Hyperlinks: for example, if someone wants to find how to express the German term based on the Hungarian term (or take any other single-word translation, e.g. in Scandinavian languages), then they can do so thanks to this entry being a translation hub. Try searching for any term, and Wiktionary will list the entries where it occurs, even if it's a red link. In terms of blue links (existing entries), you can use "What links here" to find the entry that lists other language equivalents.

Google search: e.g. if you look up the German term in Google, especially if it's followed by site:wiktionary.org, you can find other language equivalents, no matter what is the English head.

Are there still any steps missing?

You can also consider other translation hubs, the ones for elder/younger brother/sister, which have a single-word term in several languages. Just because "younger sister" doesn't sound like a distinct concept in English, does this fact disqualify the entry with its translations? Adam78 (talk) 08:53, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

RFV-failed Kiwima (talk) 01:22, 27 June 2019 (UTC)