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Which way is correct to say "technologies websites" or "technology websites" and why?

By a technology website I mean a website that contains some information about technologies

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  • Maybe technological websites?...
    – JustOneMan
    Sep 4, 2018 at 20:21
  • @JustOneMan as of my understanding "technological websites" expression is about implementation of the websites and "technology websites" expression is about content of the websites
    – evgpisarchik
    Sep 5, 2018 at 21:29

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Technology is being used here as a noun adjunct (also called an attributive noun), which is to say, a noun being used as an adjective to describe another noun.

When nouns are used this way, they are used in the singular. Hence while a book shop will probably have more than one book, it is still a "book shop", not a "books shop".

This is even the case with nouns like scissors and trousers that are normally always plural: "Scissor sharpener", "trouser press", etc.

And hence you would want "technology websites" here.

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    Ah... interesting - sometimes I find the problem with being a native speaker is you often know which is correct without being able to correctly label why ;)
    – DoneWithThis.
    Sep 4, 2018 at 12:55
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    @Tetsujin it's what makes the study of grammar so interesting; it's not "here's a bunch of rules to follow" but rather "here's a bunch of rules you already follow, without even realising it".
    – Jon Hanna
    Sep 4, 2018 at 13:45
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    @evgpisarchik Google knows (some) grammar and spelling rules and so is searching for "technology website", "technology websites", "technologies website", etc, as well. In my listing, the only places where "technologies websites" occurs on the first page are for this question, company names ending with Technologies, and a study of tech used by websites, where something else is being said with the two words next to each other.
    – jaxad0127
    Sep 4, 2018 at 16:48
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    @evgpisarchik Can you show a specific search result that uses "technologies websites" in the way you were asking about? "Company Technologies websites" doesn't work, because "Company Technologies" is a proper noun, naming an entity that operates multiple websites. The study preview fragment opens with "We wanted to find out what technologies websites were using," which is using a grammatical construct that happens to put the words next to each other, and is not a use of the two words as one unit.
    – jaxad0127
    Sep 4, 2018 at 17:00
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    @V2Blast Thanks for the correction! The point remains that it's incorrect without an apostrophe.
    – CJ Dennis
    Sep 5, 2018 at 7:11
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I can't quite decide whether it qualifies as an uncountable noun or simply an adjective to describe the type of website. Either way, technology remains singular in this usage.

Consider there are many websites, discussing many types of technology - you would still say

There are many technology websites, covering many aspects of many different technologies.

I've intentionally used many each time there - normally you would vary your counts & comparisons, but just to show which aspect we are counting each time

many websites [not technologies]
many aspects

but we close with a countable version,

many technologies.

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  • It becomes more clear when you swap "technology" with a noun that is clearly countable: book store, toy store, ant colony. It's neither uncountable nor a (true) adjective, it's a noun adjunct.
    – Flater
    Sep 5, 2018 at 8:37
  • Indeed, though to recognise that, first I would have had to have heard of a noun adjunct before today ;))
    – DoneWithThis.
    Sep 5, 2018 at 8:39

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