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I don't have enough reputation to make comments on this site (what a weird system), so I have to make this a question on its own.

I am referencing an answer made to another question about the differences between logged-in and logged in, that is located here: https://english.stackexchange.com/a/11002/127722

The user whose answer was accepted, has written his own example which reads:

the user login was not successful

But isn't that wrong? I thought correct forms would be either:

the user-login was not successful

Or:

user's login was not successful

Which is (are) correct?

Community
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Digital Ninja
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  • As mentioned on the question you linked, login is a noun, therefore, the user login was not successful is the correct option. – Othya Jul 03 '15 at 12:26

1 Answers1

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User login is a perfectly normal kind of noun phrase using a noun as a modifier, exactly like user experience or coffee table. You could argue that it is redundant (what other kind of login is there?) but it's perfectly grammatical and idiomatic.

User's login is also grammatical, and has a slightly different meaning, in that it is relating the login to a (particular) user, rather than qualifying the type of login.

I'm not interested in minutiae of punctuation, but I can't see any reason why you should hyphenate the phrase.

Colin Fine
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