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Hyphens clarify compounds, they don’t create them. Grammatically, ‘child eating’ modifies ‘pedophiles’, the head noun. Reading ‘child’ as its own noun would require ‘a child’ or a different construction, which isn’t what’s written.

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PapaStevesy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

Hyphens clarify compounds

Exactly, they clarify multi-word compound adjectives from multi-word non-compound adjectives. Only multi-word compound adjectives in everyday, common use can get away with forgoing the hyphen without creating the kind of confusion exemplified perfectly by the comments above. “Child-eating” is obviously not in everyday, common usage, and thus should be hyphenated.

Reading ‘child’ as its own noun would require ‘a child’ or a different construction, which isn’t what’s written.

I’m not reading it as its own noun, I’m reading it as a noun adjunct, describing pedophiles. If the pedophiles are children, they’re child pedophiles. If those child pedophiles are eating… Sure it should have a comma, but lord knows no one on the Internet knows how to use them properly

None of this really matters because it was all based on a shitreply to a doom post, who gives a shit?

Still don’t know what gamer and yeah has to do with anything, but you do you bud 😘

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