ON REVISING NOUN COMPOUNDS: FOUR TESTS
David S. Kaufer, Erwin Ray Steinberg · The Journal of Advanced Composition · 1984
are awkward or, worse, ambiguous, especially when they include one or more nominalizations. They may be more economical than the fully articulated phrase, and they may be entirely acceptable in scientific and technical writing. But they are graceless all the same. And when we recognize their potential ambiguity, we may decide that in the long run the very slight economy in words is a bad bargain.