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I'm struggling with concise writing of the following. None of the sentences "sound" nice. Could you give some guidance?

A) There is a need for both clinically and policy-relevant evidence?

B) There is a need for both clinical- and policy-relevant evidence?

C) There is a need for both clinical and policy-relevant evidence?

tchrist
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st4co4
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    Does this answer your question? A suspended hyphen in a list with only one hyphenated word – Edwin Ashworth Mar 19 '22 at 19:25
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    @EdwinAshworth — I think it's a different problem. Here the poster is mixing adverbs and nouns used as adjectives. He is also using a construction that does not fit in this case. – David Mar 19 '22 at 23:34
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    Rather than pursuing the structure you currently have in place and making unrealistic demands on simple punctuation as a way to avoid lengthening it, consider reworking it to say express the underlying idea more naturally. For example: "We need evidence relevant to both policy and clinical practice." As a bonus, even though my proposed revision adds the clarifying noun "practice" to the sentence, it is no longer than the shortest of your three original formulations (10 words, 62 characters, including letter spaces). – Sven Yargs Mar 20 '22 at 01:21
  • @SvenYargs But to be fair, I think that much of your savings came from shortening "there is a need for" to "we need" (which probably should have been done anyway if first person were appropriate). – MarcInManhattan Mar 20 '22 at 03:50
  • In addition to the grammatic issues, there is a semantic problem here. There may be a lack of clinically relevant evidence - but there isn't a need for it. And there certainly isn't a need for policy relevant evidence. Evidence and policy operate as separate sovereign states - cognizant of each other, but unbothered any real or apparent differences. If you work with evidence, don't get caught fiddling with policy. If you work with policy, don't get caught fiddling with evidence. – Phil Sweet Mar 20 '22 at 13:56
  • @David Sven Yargs' answer there includes general recommendation that such coordinations as << 'given and surname'; 'cattle and sheepmen' should be written in full: 'given name and surname'; 'cattlemen and sheepmen'. >> Surely this extends to 'There is a need for both clinically relevant and policy-relevant evidence'. – Edwin Ashworth Mar 20 '22 at 14:47
  • @EdwinAshworth — I generally do not read comments that are more like answers, and whether or not that is the case here I missed that. (It was someone else’s one-liner that caught my eye. But I agree that that is a valid third possibility and I’ll edit my answer to include it. – David Mar 20 '22 at 16:15

1 Answers1

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Synopsis

The problem here is caused by trying to abbreviate a sentence in which there is a combination of an (adverb + adjective) and a noun/adjective compound (adjective with a noun complement) using the same adjective.

General Explanation

The structure that we are concerned with is one in which the meaning of the adjective ‘relevant’ is narrowed or made more precise. The poster has two alternatives with the same adjective and wishes to make it more concise by avoiding repetition.

The full form of this involves a following pronoun and noun:

…evidence relevant to (the) clinic and relevant to policy

which could be abbreviated

…evidence relevant to clinic and policy.

However he wishes to shorten this further by dispensing with the preposition. His suggestions incorporate two possibilities:

  1. Converting the noun to an adverb. In cases where this is possible, e.g. with two nouns like ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’, one could write:

…strategically and tactically relevant considerations.

No hyphen is needed because ‘strategically’ and ‘tactically’ are unambiguously adverbs.

  1. Using the noun to make a compound noun+adjective. This is done where no adverb related to the noun exists, e.g. ‘dog’ and ‘cat’:

…dog- and cat-relevant medications.

Hyphenation is not obligatory, but is often desirable to remove false scent†. It is necessary in this case of applying the convention that the adjective can be omitted in a list, to make it clear that the noun, ‘dog’, is in a compound with the hyphenated adjective later in the sentence.

The Example in the Question

The general problem here is that the noun, clinic (or clinical practice etc.), has an associated adverb, clinically, but the noun, policy, does not (political hardly serves). Thus, I would say:

A. This is incorrect as ‘clinically’ is an adverb which is not intended to qualify ‘policy-relevant’, the only possibility in the sentence.

B. The use of ‘clinical-’ followed by ‘policy-relevant’ indicates ‘clinical-relevant’ evidence, and is probably what the poster means. It is therefore grammatically correct.
I, personally find this jars, first because I am old-fashioned and don’t like invented noun-adjective compounds (I doubt whether you will find them in Jane Austen), and second because it seems to indicate lack of linguistic sophistication to use ‘clinical-relevant’ when the adverb, ‘clinically’, exists. Further, ‘clinical’ is an adjective, not a noun like ‘policy’, so there is an inconsistent feel about the sentence. However this is just a matter of style and taste, not grammar.

C. ‘Clinical’ without the hyphen is correct if the poster just means ‘clinical evidence’, whereas I suspect he means ‘clinic(al)-relevant’. (Again my own prejudice is against ‘policy-relevant’.)

Possible stylistic improvements

  1. Keep the two-letter, one-syllable pronoun ‘to’:

There is a need for evidence that is relevant to both policy and the clinic.

or

  1. As suggested by Edwin Ashworth, keep both the adverbial and compound construction but write them in full:

There is a need for both clinically relevant and policy-relevant evidence

or

  1. Modify the sentence by choosing an appropriate word related to policy that has an adjectival form. This may or may not be possible depending on context, but something like:

There is a need for both clinically and administratively relevant evidence

My own preference would be 1 (as a member of The Society for the Preservation of Prepositions), and, as previously explained, I do not like the compound of 2.

In addition, commenting, @SvenYargs suggested a further way to make the sentence more concise: replace “There is a need for” by “We need”.

† False Scent

To quote from the Wikipedia entry: “In… A Dictionary of Modern English Usage Fowler uses the heading false scent to explain writing that causes the reader to second-guess: because the writer knows what is coming ahead, he may forget that his reader does not, and unwittingly ‘lay false scent’ by writing something ambiguous that can only be disambiguated later in the text…”

In noun+adjective compounds without hyphenation, false scent would be laid if there were a possibility of reading the noun as a noun and subsequently have to adjust to the fact that it was part of a combination. In this case, ‘clinical’ (as an adjective) does not lay false scent, but if ‘policy’ came first in the sentence, “There is a need for policy ” could be read as such, whereas the ‘need’ is in fact for ‘evidence’.

David
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  • If there’s a need both for clinically relevant evidence and for policy-relevant evidence, why shouldn’t we need evidence (that’s) both clinically and policy relevant? // I think you’ll upon brief reflection find that the noun policy cannot possibly be “modifying” the adjective relevant, given that nouns never modify adjectives. Complements and modifiers work differently: think of how a dog can be both house trained and people friendly. Same thing as before in that no adjectives were modified by nouns here, either, only complemented by them. – tchrist Mar 20 '22 at 00:10
  • @tchrist — Thank you for your comments. In response to these I have removed the final part of my original and tried to use the correct grammatical terms. I have extended my answer a little to try to make the logic clearer. If there are still aspects you take exception to, please point them out. – David Mar 20 '22 at 12:09