test positive for...

[NAL123]

Consider this sentence, please:

a) He tested positive for covid-19.

Can we say the following sentence:

b) He tested covid-19 positive. ( I've seen this used in many (Indian) newspapers)

To me, b) sounds awkward and seems grammatically incorrect, because it looks like "covid-19" is modifying the noun "positive", adjectivally, whereas in a), this is not the case.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

I don't know whether (b) is grammatical, but yes, it's awkward, and (a) is more natural.

 

[GoesStation]

Consider this sentence, please:

a) He tested positive for covid-19.

Can we say the following sentence:

b) He tested covid-19 positive. ( I've seen this used in many (Indian) newspapers)

To me, b) sounds awkward and seems grammatically incorrect, because it looks like "covid-19" is modifying the noun "positive", adjectivally, whereas in a), this is not the case.

I haven't seen it in any Western media, but it's a perfectly valid construction. In sentence B, "covid-19" is an attributive noun, a noun acting as an adjective. We've used the same construction in HIV-positive for decades now.

I'd say it only looks awkward because we're not used to seeing it.

 

[NAL123]

We've used the same construction in HIV-positive for decades now.

Do we say "he tested HIV positive"?

 

[GoesStation]

Do we say "he tested HIV positive"?

Now that you mention it, no. We'd say He tested positive for HIV. But you could say He's been HIV-positive for three years. So a more natural way to use this construction with COVID-19 is something like He was COVID-19-positive when he got back from New York.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

I haven't seen it in any Western media, but it's a perfectly valid construction. In sentence B, "covid-19" is an attributive noun, a noun acting as an adjective. We've used the same construction in HIV-positive for decades now. . . .

Yup, I've always thought that sounded awkward, too. Good to know that at least it's grammatical.

 

[tedmc]

Since it is a compound adjective, shouldn't it be hyphenated as one word viz. "covid-19-positive" as G S has hyphenated "HIV-positive"?

 

[Tdol]

I think it's a case of not using it with the verb test. His is/has been/was found to be HIV-positive sound fine to me. Testing for some reason doesn't fit this pattern to me.

 

[Tdol]

Since it is a compound adjective, shouldn't it be hyphenated as one word viz. "covid-19-positive" as G S has hyphenated "HIV-positive"?

It's definitely not something I would lose sleep about. And I think you could argue for covid-19 positive.

 

[GoesStation]

I think it's a case of not using it with the verb test. His is/has been/was found to be HIV-positive sound fine to me. Testing for some reason doesn't fit this pattern to me.

Me neither. I tried, and failed, to think of a way to generalize the problem.

 

[Tdol]

Maybe we'll think differently in a few months with all this testing. It was around not much more than a decade that people were arguing that an email was wrong because mail was uncountable. It barely sound coherent now. With universal testing, things may shift in the next few months. Things are moving fast with the illness. The language of technology never stays still, and rarely respects the past.

It could simply be that people had HIV tests, but being cleared wasn't such an issue because once you were clear you pretty much knew you could control being clear. I took one HIV test in the 1990s. Since then I know that only a dirty needle could be a problem. Covid-19 may require repeat testing so the language may be different. If the testing is different, the phrasing may change.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Yikes. I puzzled over to-hyphen-or-not-to-hyphen, too. Moral: Always be grammatical — and if you can't be grammatical, be consistent.

 

[Phaedrus]

Since it is a compound adjective, shouldn't it be hyphenated as one word viz. "covid-19-positive" as G S has hyphenated "HIV-positive"?

A case could actually be made for using the en dash instead of the hyphen:

COVID-19–positive

Since "19" is joined to "COVID" by a hyphen, the en dash between "19" and "positive" clarifies that "positive" belongs to the preceding hyphenated duo.

 

[Tdol]

Yikes. I puzzled over to-hyphen-or-not-to-hyphen, too. Moral: Always be grammatical — and if you can't be grammatical, be consistent.

And if you can't be consistent....

 

[Tdol]

A case could actually be made for using the en dash instead of the hyphen:

COVID-19–positive

Since "19" is joined to "COVID" by a hyphen, the en dash between "19" and "positive" clarifies that "positive" belongs to the preceding hyphenated duo.

I have to confess that I have always ignored the difference between the em and en dashes- they're all dashes to me.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

I have to confess that I have always ignored the difference between the em and en dashes- they're all dashes to me.

It's easier to think of them as dashes (ems) that separate words and hyphens (ens) that connect them.

 

[Tdol]

Still not convinced. It's like worrying about whether it's a present participle or a gerund. ;-)

 

[Phaedrus]

I have to confess that I have always ignored the difference between the em and en dashes- they're all dashes to me.

Hyphens join words together. In the use I propose above, the en dash functions similarly to a hyphen, but it joins a group of words to another word.

En dashes are also commonly used when they do not join words together but indicate a relationship between them often specified by a preposition:

the subject–object distinction = the distinction between subject and object
the teacher–student relationship = the relationship between teacher and student ("teacher-students" would be teachers who are themselves students)
French–English translations = translations from French to English ("French-English" would presumably be some sort of hybrid language)

In none of the above cases would an em dash work instead; however, you could get away with an em dash in "pages 103–105" (= pages 103 to 105).

 

[Tdol]

I got through a lot of my life without knowing about them, and couldn't get worked up when I did learn. I'll leave it to publishers too.

 

[jutfrank]

Punctuation is not just for publishers to worry about. English teachers need to know how to use it too.