Editing Openai/695e35ca-c9c0-8003-8b44-8517505d1bda (section)

=== Assistant: Great question. ===
Great question. Short answer: in a written, formal register, the collocations are usually those pairs that are:
* denotative and technical rather than emotional
* semantically selective (the adjective fits a specific subtype of the noun)
* stable in specialized writing (science, policy, legal, academic prose)
* not merely any adjective + noun, but show restricted combinability

Let’s go through the pairs you showed and divide them.

==== 🟢 Strong collocations for formal written English ====

These sound fully natural in academic / policy / technical prose:
* drug-related accident
* nuclear-plant accident
* unreported accident

===== ✔ Why these count as collocations =====
# restricted meaning - “drug-related accident” is not simply “an accident that happens to involve drugs” — it’s a recognized category in public health and criminology.
# low substitutability - you don’t usually say drug-connected accident or drug-linked accident in formal writing
# domain-specific usage - these occur in medicine, safety engineering, transportation studies, insurance, etc.
# informational, not emotional - these adjectives classify rather than evaluate

These are close to terminological collocations (sometimes bordering on technical terms).

==== 🟡 Acceptable, but context-dependent formal collocations ====

These may count as collocations in specialized disciplines:
* underwater accident (diving / naval / marine safety context)
* typical accident (risk analysis, case classification)
* occasional accident (epidemiology / child development reporting)

These are:
* less fixed than the first group
* still formal in tone
* classificatory rather than emotional

They tend to occur where the writer is doing taxonomy or categorization of accidents.

==== 🔴 Not collocations in formal written English (informal or evaluative) ====

These are generally not considered formal collocations:
* big accident
* terrible accident
* spectacular accident

===== ✘ Why these are not preferred in formal writing =====
* evaluative or emotional - “terrible” and “spectacular” express attitude, not classification
* informal register - “big accident” is conversation-level; formal writing uses major/serious accident
* journalistic flavor - “spectacular accident” occurs in headlines, not academic prose

Even if frequent, they reflect register mismatch, so they are not “collocations of formal written English.”

: In formal writing, you would expect:
: 
: major accident
: 
: serious accident
: rather than big accident or terrible accident

==== 🟣 Special note: atomic accident ====
* borderline / uncommon today
* historically used (1950s–1970s)
* now replaced by nuclear accident
* feels dated or non-technical in current formal writing

So: it is collocationally meaningful, but diachronically restricted.

==== ✅ Rules of thumb for deciding collocations in formal writing ====

A pair counts as a collocation in formal written registers if:
* it shows semantic specialization (classifies a subtype)
* cannot be freely replaced by synonyms
* occurs in technical or institutional texts
* lacks emotional coloring
* expresses what kind of X, not how the writer feels about X

Compare:

| Pair                   | Register            | Collocation status |
| ---------------------- | ------------------- | ------------------ |
| drug-related accident  | formal/technical    | strong collocation |
| nuclear-plant accident | formal/technical    | strong collocation |
| unreported accident    | formal/legal/admin  | strong collocation |
| underwater accident    | technical context   | medium             |
| typical accident       | academic analysis   | medium             |
| big accident           | informal speech     | no                 |
| terrible accident      | emotional narrative | no                 |
| spectacular accident   | journalistic        | no                 |

===== If you’d like, I can also: =====
* compute MI/t-score collocation strength if you give counts
* map these to register labels (spoken, fiction, news, academic)
* suggest better academic alternatives (e.g., major vs big, severe vs terrible)
* extract formal collocations from your file automatically

Just tell me which direction you want to go.