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The phrase I don't know how to hyphenate is

  • asset type specific keywords and patterns

and the negated version

  • non asset type specific keywords and patterns.

I looked around and found this Q&A How would you hyphenate a 4 word phrase?, which more or less answers my question. However, I'm using the phrases above as table headings in technical documentation, so I would prefer it to be more concise.

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    I'm inclined to say "asset-type specific keywords and patterns", where the compound adjective is just "asset-type". Would that fit the technical meaning?
    – BillJ
    Nov 9, 2020 at 14:51
  • The first 2 results from searching for the sequence "asset type specific" in Google Books are #1 ("predicative" adjective, after the verb) Objectives may in some cases be asset type specific (no hyphen), and #2 ("standard" adjective before noun) [Something applies to] each of the asset-type-specific loading methods. In that second context, the "compound noun" being modified is "loading methods", and all elements in the "compound adjective" are connected by hyphens. That's the default orthography.
    – FumbleFingers
    Nov 9, 2020 at 15:32
  • As BillJ implies, this is ambiguous. Can you put square brackets round closely-coherent words (eg [asset type] [specific] vs [asset type specific], please.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Nov 9, 2020 at 15:40
  • Don’t do it. Rewrite it in English.
    – David
    Nov 9, 2020 at 20:29

1 Answer 1

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"Asset-type-specific keywords and patterns" - keywords and patterns that are of the type that are specific to assets.

"Non-asset-type-specific keywords and patterns" - keywords and patterns that are of the type that are specific to non-assets.

Pub Med https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/97870/

Type-specific and non-type-specific reactions of purified M protein preparations

Nature Neuroscience https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-019-0479-z

Cell-type-specific profiling of brain mitochondria reveals functional and molecular diversity.

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