Talk:smoking section

RFD discussion

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smoking section and nonsmoking section

These were just deleted. I think they should be restored. They're not simply SOP. A smoking section could just refer to a section where people are presently smoking regardless of whether or not they're allowed too. However, "smoking section" refers to an area in a restaurant or bar where smoking is permitted. Boxieman (talk) 20:51, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Hm, I would lean delete, but that's a decent point. It's possible these pass the "tennis player test" (Talk:tennis player) in that way. - -sche (discuss) 22:27, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

You could also interpret it as adjective + noun instead of a compound. A section that is smoking, in other words. —CodeCat 22:41, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Boxieman, I think you're wrong. I can't imagine anyone standing outside a pub calling the pavement a 'smoking section'. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:44, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Keep deleted I think we need a new sense of "smoking" for this, meaning "permitting the use of tobacco products" (opposite to what we have now at non-smoking). "smoking section" is hardly unique. There are synonyms like "smoking area", and it's not just sections that can be smoking. Trains used to have smoking carriages, casinos can have smoking tables, offices have smoking rooms, and so on. It would be easier to just note that smoking can have this additional sense, rather than creating all of these extra entries. Smurrayinchester (talk) 22:23, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

I think an RFD would have been appropriate for these, but I would also have voted to delete. DAVilla 03:20, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

I would say restore because smoking is not used as an adjective here, like Smurrayinchester seems to be suggesting. Rather, this is a genitival compound of two nouns, the first of which is a gerund. —CodeCat 13:36, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't see how that gets in the way of it being SOP. --WikiTiki89 13:41, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, @CodeCat whether you're right or not, it seems irrelevant. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:53, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, I think it is relevant because we'd keep such noun-noun compounds in other languages. Do you argue that compounds are somehow less idiomatic in English? Because of the space, maybe? —CodeCat 22:01, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

There is little about noun-noun nominals in English that makes them more idiomatic per se than adjective-noun nominals. I don't see any relevance of other languages on such a point. DCDuring TALK 22:41, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

It seems to be not relevant to this entry or English as a whole, more relevant Dutch and German entries such as Zirkusschule which passed RFD. We know that people who are pro deleting SoP single word entries aren't in the majority as as far as I know, every single word entry nominated for being SoP has passed (example Talk:Zirkusschule). Mglovesfun (talk) 22:50, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

What I see as relevant is that we treat English differently from those languages based on orthography alone. Why is coal mine not idiomatic but coalmine is, despite being the exact same term just spelled differently? I'm sure if this were spelled smokingsection nobody would have any problems with keeping it. So why does orthography matter in what we judge to be idiomatic or SoP? I bring up other languages because when you compare it to them, it seems rather like a double standard: what is idiomatic in one we judge to be SoP in the other, despite being a compound of the exact same terms, purely because of spelling. —CodeCat 22:59, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

For a lot of purposes, a word is a series of letters and apostrophe delineated by punctuation or spaces. If you ask Word how many words your essay has, it's going to count smokingsection as one and smoking section as two. It may not be a sophisticated linguist viewpoint, but it's one a lot of our users will understand. Moreover, looking up smokingsection as two words requires breaking it into pieces and looking up smokings and ection or smokings, ect and ion, or smo, kings, ection, etc. It's not always trivial to break a compound word up, especially if you're not a native speaker.--Prosfilaes (talk) 11:43, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether smoking is acting an adjective here (its antonym non-smoking is most certainly an adjective, and it's impossible to tell whether this particular phrase would be understood as "section for smoking" (noun-noun) or "section where smoking is allowed" (adjective-noun), if people would even be aware of the distinction at all. After all, in restaurants where smoking is still allowed, the first question is always "smoking or non-smoking?", which seems to suggest that there is some understanding of smoking as an adjective), but like Wikitiki89 and Mglovesfun say, this seems pretty irrelevant. The standing section is the section for standing, the sleeping section is the section for sleeping, and the smoking section is the section for smoking. This is still completely SOP. Smurrayinchester (talk) 23:36, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Deleted by Mglovesfun. — TAKASUGI Shinji (talk) 03:51, 6 January 2013 (UTC)