Double hyphen
 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification.(June 2012) |
InLatin script,thedouble hyphen⹀is apunctuation markthat consists of two parallelhyphens.It was a development of the earlierdouble oblique hyphen⸗,which developed from aCentral Europeanvariant of thevirgule slash,originally a form ofscratch comma.Similar marks (seebelow) are used in other scripts.
In order to avoid it being confused with theequals sign=,the double hyphen is often shown as a double oblique hyphen in modern typography. The double hyphen is also not to be confused withtwo consecutive hyphens(--), which are often used to represent anem dash—oren dash–due to the limitations of typewriters and keyboards that do not have distinct hyphen and dash keys.
Usage[edit]
The double hyphen is used for several different purposes throughout the world:
- Sometypefaces,such asFrakturfaces, use the double hyphen as aglyphicvariant of the single hyphen. (With Fraktur faces, such a double hyphen is usually oblique.)
- It may be also used for artistic or commercial purposes to achieve a distinctive visual effect. For example, the name ofThe Waldorf⹀Astoriahotel was officially written with a double hyphen from 1949 to 2009.
- InMerriam-Websterdictionaries if a word is divided at the end of the line, and the division point happens to be a hyphen, it is replaced with a double hyphen to graphically indicate that the divided word is normally hyphenated, for examplecross⸗
country. - In several dictionaries published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, all such compound words are linked with double hyphens, whether at the end of the line or not, and the normal use of the single hyphen for non-compound words is retained. An example from the first or second page of such dictionaries isAaron's⸗rod.Examples include theCentury DictionaryandFunk & WagnallsNew Standard Dictionary of the English Language.
- It is used byCoptic languagescholars to denote the form of the verb used beforepronominalsuffixes, e.g. ⲕⲟⲧ⸗kot⹀'to build'.
- It is used by scholars of theHittite languageto separatecliticsfrom the word to which they attach; this usage has been adopted by theLeipzig Glossing Rules.
- It is used as a distinct punctuation mark inOjibwe languagepublications in the Fiero Roman orthography, as a hyphen is used to separate compound preverb units regardless of their line position, while a double hyphen is used to divide a word at the end of a line and can be treated as asoft hyphen.However, due to lack of availability of a double hyphen in most fonts, an equal sign is often used as a substitute.
- In Ojibwe,Creeand other languages usingUnified Canadian syllabics,because finalc(U+1428ᐨCANADIAN SYLLABICS FINAL SHORT HORIZONTAL STROKE) resembles a hyphen, a double hyphen (U+1400᐀CANADIAN SYLLABICS HYPHEN) is used to distinguish the punctuation from the syllabics letter.
- InJapanese,the double hyphen(ダブルハイフン,daburu haifun)(U+30A0゠KATAKANA-HIRAGANA DOUBLE HYPHEN) in rare cases replaces an English en dash or hyphen when writing foreign words inkatakanadue to their potential confusion with theprolonged sound mark(ー). It may be used to separate a person's given and family names, such as transcribing the name ofGalileo Galileias: ガリレオ゠ガリレイ.[3]Themiddle dot(・) is however much more commonly used for these purposes. (For foreign names that include both spaces and hyphens, both the middle dot and double hyphen may appear together as inCatherine Zeta-Jones:キャサリン・ゼタ゠ジョーンズ.) The double hyphen is part of theJIS X 0213standard, but is not included in more commonly used character encodings, such asShift-JISandEUC-JP.For this reason, the equals sign is frequently used in its place.
- InVolapükthe double oblique hyphen (teilamalül) has to be used instead of the simple hyphen (yümamalül) to cut a word at the end of a line or in the compound words.[4]
Stylistic variant of the single hyphen[edit]
When the double hyphen is used as a functionally equivalent graphical variant (allograph) of the single hyphen, it has the sameUnicodecode pointas a conventional hyphen (since how it is displayed/printed is a font choice on that occasion).
Similar marks[edit]
Other forms of double hyphen are given uniquecodepointsin Unicode:
| Name | Glyph | Code point | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| CANADIAN SYLLABICS HYPHEN | ᐀ | U+1400
|
Canadian Aboriginal Syllabicsto distinguish a hyphen fromU+1428CANADIAN SYLLABICS FINAL SHORT HORIZONTAL STROKE( ᐨ )
|
| DOUBLE OBLIQUE HYPHEN | ⸗ | U+2E17
|
Coptic and ancient Near Eastern language scholarship |
| DOUBLE HYPHEN | ⹀ | U+2E40
|
Generic (non-Asian) double hyphen |
| KATAKANA-HIRAGANA DOUBLE HYPHEN | ゠ | U+30A0
|
Japanese and orthography (inKatakanaorHiraganascript) |
| MODIFIER LETTER SHORT EQUALS SIGN | ꞊ | U+A78A
|
Used as a tone letter and also to mark clitics ininterlinear glossing |
See also[edit]
- U+2248≈ALMOST EQUAL TO()
- U+003D=EQUALS SIGN
- U+2550═BOX DRAWINGS DOUBLE HORIZONTAL
- Double dash (disambiguation)
References[edit]
- ^Hans G. Güterbock, Harry A. Hoffner, Theo P. J. van den Hout:The Hittite Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CHD),volume L–N, Chicago (USA) 1989,ISBN0-918986-58-3,p. 355. – Detail of the left border of the second column.
- ^Arno Schmidt:Erzählungen,Frankfurt am Main (Germany) 1994,ISBN3-10-373505-7,p. 525. – Detail of the right border of the printed text.
- ^"Double hyphen ( ダブルハイフン ) の ý vị - goo quốc ngữ sách tra cứu".
- ^Arie de Jong,Gramat Volapüka,Leiden, Brill, 1931, § 34.
External links[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related toDouble hyphens.