In an excellent recent book, Susie Dent draws attention to what she calls Stringing along . She says it is:
"The tendency to string compound adjectives together is a notable pattern in current discourse, and much contemporary jargon relies on it. The Higher Education Policy Institute called modern universities client-focused, customer-centric, and outward-facing all in one take, while the tendency to pile up attributive adjectives, often without hyphens, is also striking. One example from the Internet speaks of a low cost easy to use web based document management system.

You will all know many examples. She is, as usual, observing and describing current use and misuse rather than being prescriptive. But you may think these are forms to avoid?

If I'm producing a thousand-word report, does 'client-focused, customer-centric, outward-facing' count for three words, or for six?

Not that it matters, for I would never produce such a long-winded, muddle-headed, mealy-mouthed monstrosity.

Purely out of curiosity, how does client-focused differ from customer-centric and what, in a business context, does outward-facing mean?

At work, customer-facing and outward-facing seem to mean pretty much the same thing, i.e., not an internal document, but a public one. Except, maybe outward-facing includes the competition, too.

quote:

Originally posted by shufitz:
If I'm producing a thousand-word report, does 'client-focused, customer-centric, outward-facing' count for three words, or for six?

Sorry Shu. You've slipped up by inserting commas
And, BobHale and zmj, I don't think Susie Dent could see any sense or merit in her quotation, so save your curiosity for a more worthy object

It did occur to me that if you are both customer-centric and outward facing you must be looking away from the customer.

This is a little off-subject, but it is about hyphens.
Just recently we had the discussion at work about using hyphens with pre words; that particular word I as interested in was prelicensure. When looking it up, we found that most style guides only use a hyphen when there are 2 es in a row, such as in pre-existing. Is that accurate?

Well, there's always "preeminent."

quote:

Originally posted by saranita:
Well, there's always "preeminent."

That's a fine preemptive strike. Or, on reflection a postemptive strike. Now there's a neologism for all.
PS. I see I am wrong again. The OED hyphenates pre-emptive but it does cite quotations using preëmptive. The old style of adding an umlaut to the 2nd vowel does the trick.

I did always like to read coöperative in older texts.

Also a little OT, but speaking of hyphens,

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This message has been edited. Last edited by: dalehileman,

By chance encounter realized followup above was as a breach of protocol

Sorry it took so long. Forgive an old guy on the brink of Alzheimer's

quote:

The OED [...] does cite quotations using preëmptive

This always looks German to me, and I imagine it Anglicized as preeemptive.

There's nothing wrong per se with English's ability to string nouns and adjectives together to make compound words. In fact, it's kinda cool.

1. The creative use of language is to be discouraged.

2. There is no number 2.

3. All words must have only one meaning.

4. See 2.

5. Follow my punctuation.

7. Isn't this where we came in?

8. Words borrowed from other languages or dialects after 1066 CE are to returned to their respective languages or dialects. No exceptions. (Check with the OED for earliest citation.)

9. No abbreviations ever!

10. There is no number 2.

zm, how can I put this tactfully?

I've read a couple of todays posts. Have you forgotten your medication or something.

Have you forgotten your medication or something.

No, Bob, I haven't. I just wanted to see if the grass was greener on the flip side of the coin. It's not. I've reverted to the former side.

quote:

I just wanted to see if the grass was greener ...

I thought it might be the grass ...

I thought it might be the grass

Prithee, let us not make hay of this.

So long as you don't appear as a man of straw.