Dash it all
OK, native speakers of Spanish. Now's your chance to shine (and help me win a bet).
I do a lot of work with typography, and one of my recent projects was in Spanish. I had to use hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes throughout. However, when I asked the author what these particular typographical elements were called in Spanish, only one word came up: guion.
After some research (and much insistence on my part), I found that the hyphen is called guion, and an em dash is called either raya or guion largo.
I maintain that there has to exist a word in Spanish to account for the en dash, even though they're not used in Spanish. The whole point of the en dash (in English, anyway) is to denote range (for example, "1000–1500 patients"). The only thing I've been able to find is "guion de la anchura de una letra 'n'," and that's just not cutting it for me. This may be enough to win my bet, but I'd really like it if a specific term (and not just a description) existed in Spanish.
If it's any help/interest to you, I had a slight rant on the topic of the various dashes back when I first started blogging. Enjoy.
Ayúdenme aquí, por favor, o me voy a morir de la vergüenza...
I do a lot of work with typography, and one of my recent projects was in Spanish. I had to use hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes throughout. However, when I asked the author what these particular typographical elements were called in Spanish, only one word came up: guion.
After some research (and much insistence on my part), I found that the hyphen is called guion, and an em dash is called either raya or guion largo.
I maintain that there has to exist a word in Spanish to account for the en dash, even though they're not used in Spanish. The whole point of the en dash (in English, anyway) is to denote range (for example, "1000–1500 patients"). The only thing I've been able to find is "guion de la anchura de una letra 'n'," and that's just not cutting it for me. This may be enough to win my bet, but I'd really like it if a specific term (and not just a description) existed in Spanish.
If it's any help/interest to you, I had a slight rant on the topic of the various dashes back when I first started blogging. Enjoy.
Ayúdenme aquí, por favor, o me voy a morir de la vergüenza...
posted by Sasquatch at
6:59 PM
2 Comments:
La llama de Peru es un animal muy peligroso.
(How many words did I misspell?)
By
Merujo, at 2/03/2006 12:43 PM
If you want to be anal about it, the country is usually referred to as "el Perú," but you did fine
overall.
Muy bien.
By
Sasquatch, at 2/03/2006 3:36 PM
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