Hyphens: Am I a “Physician Writer” or a “Physician-Writer?”

To hyphenate or not to hyphenate, that is the question.

I am a physician who writes, and a writer who is a physician. My question: Am I a physician writer or a physician-writer?

First I tried Google. No help there. “Physician Writer” gave me 53,200 hits, “Physician-Writer” 54,700 hits. A tie.

Next step, the PubMed search engine (after all, I am a physician). This was a little bit more helpful, with (physician-writer)/(physician writer) ratio of 1.4/1.

Then iI looked for hyphenation rules. Garner’s American Usage wasn’t much help; most if its discussion was about hyphens and phrasal adjectives, which this term certainly isn’t.

Fowler’s Modern English Usage was a little more informative, giving me a clue: “Main uses of the hyphen 1. To join two or more words so as to form a single expression.” That sound pretty close. I do see physician-writer as a single expression.

And, then finally, I struck gold in the Chicago Manual of Style: In the case of noun + noun, two functions, (both nouns equal) a hyphen is used. Examples: writer-director, philosopher-king, and city-state.

Physician and writer are equal nouns ∴ I am a physician-writer, not a physician writer.

Next question: Am I an author or a writer?