This study empirically tested the assumption that nominal compounds, the juxtaposi
tion of three or more nouns, retain sufficient semantic information to justify their use
for brevity. The most important finding was that over one-third of the respondents
misidentified (out of five compounds given them) at least one headword—syntactically,
the last noun in the compound. We therefore recommend: (1) Students, as readers, be
reminded of the headword's importance and (2) nominal compounds be employed for
clearer understanding only following their syntactically fuller forms (including
prepositions, verbals, etc.) in a manner similar to that employed for acronyms.
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