I spend an awful lot of time editing other people’s technical text. Some of it is my job, some of it is service (reviewing for journals), and some of it is out of the goodness of my black, black heart.
For years, though, one phrase has taunted me. Forgive me for being pedantic, but the story goes like this:
Your computer is running an operating system right now. It may be GNU/Linux, or OS/X[1], or Windows, or OpenSolaris (though probably not), or whatever.
And sometimes, when you’re talking about something, you want to say it is specific to a particular operating system, rather than generically true. For example, there may be a bug in an application which runs under both Linux and Windows, but the bug only occurs under Windows, so that bug is specific to the Windows operating system.
That is, it is an operating system–specific bug.
If you’re like me, seeing it described that way gives you the heebie-jeebies, because you think there should be some hyphens somewhere in the phrase “operating system–specific”, but that just looks wrong.
Operating system specific bug? Operating-system-specific bug? Operating-system specific bug?
Argh no no no no no.
I have all of the coursework necessary for a PhD in linguistics, thankyouverymuch, and for years I still couldn’t quite figure out how to describe that.
I think the Chicago Manual of Style has sorted it out for me, finally – from section 6.80, “En dashes with compound adjectives”:
The en dash can be used in place of a hyphen in a compound adjective when one of its elements consists of an open compound or when both elements consist of hyphenated compounds … [I]t is intended to signal a more comprehensive link than a hyphen would. It should be used sparingly, and only when a more elegant solution is unavailable.
(Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition, section 6.80, p. 332)
Unfortunately, the example which most closely corresponds to my problem (p. 333: “country music-influenced lyrics”) — that is, a compound adjective whose first element is an open compound (here: “country music”; in my case, “operating system”) — is also the most awkward of the examples given. However, the shoe fits.
If we’re just talking about systems, or we refer to the operating system as the OS, it’s pretty clear: system-specific, OS-specific. Normal hyphenation (and hyphens) work just fine for the compound adjectives here, and most English speakers, I think, would agree that they are correct (“system-specific bugs“, “an OS-specific implementation“).
I’m not going to get into the morass surrounding hyphenation of simple compound modifiers here — you’ll have to take my word for it (or have a peek at CMoS section 7.77–85) — but here, the goal is to make the bindings between words more apparent. Above, we’re talking about bugs which are specific to a particular system, not emphasizing specific bugs. So the real goal is to bind the first element strongly to “specific”.
Having the open compound as the first element, however, creates confusion, or at least stylistic discomfort.
The en dash is slightly longer than a hyphen: “-” vs “–”. I’ve admittedly never paid any attention to it (nor really to its evil cousin, the em dash (“—”), though I at least was aware the em dash existed and what it was sometimes used for), other than the fact that LaTeX represents three kinds of hyphens/dashes and I always have to think about which one I’m supposed to use[2].
Apparently, though, this is the answer to my problem – that is, binding the open compound element (operating system) to the adjective which would normally appear as a hyphenated compound (X-specific) before the noun it modifies. I don’t think it will make readers happier, since I doubt I’m the only one who would not have recognized an en dash if it bit my oversized hindquarters, but apparently my answer is operating system–specific. Not operating system-specific, not operating-system-specific, and not operating-system specific.
It’s not entirely satisfying, but at least it’s an answer I can buy for the moment. (CS people I’m editing for in the future, take note… 
)
My real advice would be to use OS-specific <noun> where you can, since that’s a common usage and avoids the readability problem, but it does have a degree of informality to it, and so if you must use “operating system–specific”, you can at least give a reason for your choice of punctuation.
- [1] Edit: Susi rightly points out that I am a dork for calling it iOS, though in my defense, I try very hard not to think too hard about Apple products. So there’s your Mac OS, my friend
↩ - [2] N.B.: In LaTeX, hyphen (-) is a single dash:
-, en dash (–) is two dashes:--, and em dash (—) is three dashes:---↩
Professional computer geek and linguist living in Germany, doing infosec stuff and being the freakiest mother ever.
Alternatively, “This bug is specific to the _________ operating system.”
Right, but the problem is that there are a lot of circumstances where it appears so often throughout a text that it really has to be made more compact, especially for academic texts which are dense and always at the edge of the journal/conference page limit
.
(My example is intentionally simple – for the text I was editing last night, this wasn’t a viable alternative, nor could I have used “OS-specific”. If I’m feeling especially masochistic, I’ll try to give the real context some other time.)
No, love … my computer is running Mac OS, not iOS … that’s only for the iPad and the iPhone. Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Hugs
=)
All I’m gonna say is…if you think English grammar is bad, you should try French! But yes, in this case, I can see the dilemma in using the hyphen and where it should be placed. My instinct would have had me write “operating system-specific bug.”