Adjectives

[EricaWW]

From some newspaper:
"Although membership never again reached its high of 34 percent of the labor force, attained in 1953, it was still 25 percent in 1970 and much higher in the intermediate technology industries, such as auto, steel, oil, chemical, machine tools, and electrical."

Both "chemical" and "electrical" are adjectives. Could this be an error?

[English Freak]

Chemical is both a noun and an adjective. But electrical, as far as I know, is just an adjective.

[TheParser]

From some newspaper:
"Although membership never again reached its high of 34 percent of the labor force, attained in 1953, it was still 25 percent in 1970 and much higher in the intermediate technology industries, such as auto, steel, oil, chemical, machine tools, and electrical."

Both "chemical" and "electrical" are adjectives. Could this be an error?

NOT A TEACHER


(1) As you know, we modify nouns with adjectives.

(2) Therefore, I feel that "chemical industry" and "electrical industry" are

fine English.

(3) As you also know, we often use nouns as if they were adjectives, so I feel that

the following are fine English, too:

"auto(mobile) industry"
"steel industry"
"oil industry"
"machine tools/tool industry"

(a) In fact, maybe some people feel that we should use an adjective for the

first one: automotive industry.