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For ex­am­ple, can I get away with writing bio/tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vances have made?

Even if this is or­tho­graph­i­cally ac­cept­able in one or another kind of writ­ten English, would it better for me to use the word biotech­no­log­i­cal as a single word, or should I in­stead write bi­o­log­i­cal and tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vances have made?

I haven’t been able to find any an­swers about this, whether on this web­site or else­where.

tchrist
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200Ethan
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  • Biotechnological is okay. I wouldn't use it to mean biological and technological, but advances that are both in one. As for slashes, they usually mean on or the other, and I hate them for the wimpiness they convey. – Yosef Baskin Jan 11 '21 at 18:58
  • Be apprised that this cannot possibly have anything to do with grammar or grammatical correctness: It can only be grammatically correct if it is audible. That's because if you can't hear it, it's not grammar. Grammar is only about fitting together one or both of two things: either things smaller than a word (*morphology) or else things larger than a word (syntax*). – tchrist Jan 11 '21 at 19:03
  • @YosefBaskin I probably shouldn't have suggested the idea of using biotechnological when I did mean biological and technological, nevertheless thank you for your input! – 200Ethan Jan 11 '21 at 19:05
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    I’ve edited your question into what I think it is that you are asking. Please do not hesitate to edit it yourself if there’s anything that I’ve got wrong here. But I think you may be looking for suspension hyphens. – tchrist Jan 11 '21 at 19:11
  • @tchrist thanks for bettering my question, giving me a potential solution, and teaching me a new word! – 200Ethan Jan 11 '21 at 19:12
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    See @Peter Shor's response at How to abbreviate one noun when coupled with another that has the same ending (using hyphens, eg << land- and seascapes >>). As not many examples of this device seem acceptable, it is doubtful whether many (if any) examples using dashes would be considered standard. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 11 '21 at 19:24

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The key point to always remember is to make your communication unambiguous and easy to understand. This takes priority.

The slash is ill-defined in English, and thus frequently achieves confusion.

I've seen various writings where people have used the slash to mean any of "or", "and", "both", "either", "a combination of", a hyphen, etc.

I've had occasions where someone has used a slash, and I've genuinely had no idea what they meant. Despite rereading the paragraph several times, I've had to ask the writer to explain what they meant.

Using the slash slows down the reader, as they try to understand what you actually meant. Does "bio/tech­no­log­i­cal" mean "bio and technological", "bio or technological", "a combination of bio and technological", "biological and technological", "biological or technological", or something else? (When I first saw what you wrote, I thought that you meant "bio-technological", i.e. technology related to biology.)

For this reason, I would avoid using the slash except in the rare cases where its use is both widespread and obvious. (This is rare enough that I'm struggling to think of an example.)

One alternative is to use the hyphen. An example might be "uppercase and lowercase", which can be written as "upper- and lowercase". In your case, this would result in "bi­o­- and tech­no­log­i­cal". But this is somewhat forced, and thus causes the reader to have to slow down or pause, which reduces its readability. Therefore, I advise against this (although it's preferable to using a slash).

The best solution uses the conjunction that you mean. In your case, "bi­o­log­ical and tech­no­log­i­cal" does the job: it's unambiguous and easy to read, and it doesn't slow down the reader. It allows the reader to concentrate on the message, not on the language.

Paddy Landau
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