Fancy Compound Adjectives

Two of them in the same sentence! Plus a normal compound adjective

I don’t recommend getting rid of compound adjectives, even fancy ones. They speed up the sentence. Just be sure to hyphenate as necessary.

A less smooth rewrite:

A habitat that humans have just begun to explore (under the floor of the ocean) teems with creatures that we have never seen before. These include worms, snails, and deep-dwelling octopuses.

See? fancy compound adjectives can be good!

Here’s a picture of one of the creatures:

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Known to tech writers as marcom. Yes, this topic is one of my hobby horses. Just do a search in the box on the right.

I suppose we tech writers might want to call them “anthropomorphic toys” just to be precise.

—Or should I call it an expression instead of an idiom? First panel on the bottom:

So what should we call that? Have you ever heard the compromise: “It’s what it is.”?

English is relatively uninflected, so where the words are in a sentence makes a big difference. One rule is to put the verb as close as you can to the subject. Here’s and example of not doing this:

What??? The murder goes to auction?

You need two sentences here:

Rare ‘Ides of March’ dagger coin goes to auction. The coin was minted by Brutus after Julius Caesar’s murder. Make sure your writing is not easily misunderstood.

Here’s a picture of the coin:

We call it “contrary to fact.” And you should use the subjunctive instead of the indicative. Of course he’s a dog, so I guess he has permission to get it wrong.

Last panel. It should be “I wish I were a trout.”