5

While typesetting a German text, my typesetting program did something strange: my typed

[lots of text] Rechnernetze und -verbunde

was typeset as

[lots of text] Rechnernetze und -

verbunde

The reason for such a typesetting is that the end of the line has been reached right after the hyphen "-". My question is whether this typesetting is correct from the viewpoint of the German language or whether I have to force my word processor to something else. If we do something else, would hyphenating "-verbunde" at other positions be correct, such as in

[lots of text] Rechnernetze und -verbun-

de

or in

[lots of text] Rechnernetze und -ver-

bunde

?

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  • 1
    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because I think this is a technical issue of your typesetting software that might appear with any text in any language. I don't think that this is a problem of German language. – Hubert Schölnast Mar 30 '18 at 6:25
  • 8
    The problem is technical but the question is whether this might be correct in German so I think this qualifies as a language-related question. – RHa Mar 30 '18 at 8:52
  • Side note: you write *verbunde", but it should be *verbünde" with u-Umlaut. Unless, of course, you have this mistake in your source and you wanted to cite it literally including the mistake. In that case you could add "[sic]" to indicate that you are aware of the mistake but decided to not correct it. – Christian Geiselmann Mar 31 '18 at 9:45
  • @ChristianGeiselmann Duden says both are ok. – user32430 Mar 31 '18 at 20:41
9

From the viewpoint of the German language orthography, the hyphen must be attached to the word, that is, it needs to go on the next line. And from the viewpoint of German language typography, it should be a proper hyphen.

Technical side-note: You can maybe force your software not to break the line after the hyphen by using the Unicode Character ‘NON-BREAKING HYPHEN’ (U+2011): “‑”.

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4

Force your typesetter to keep hyphen and word together in the next line.

Maybe try other dashes instead of the hyphen. The Non-Breaking Hyphen is the best choice, but not available with all fonts; in this case the Figure Dash or the En Dash could work technically without looking too odd.

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  • 3
    Forcing hyphen and word together is good but using the en-dash, which is nearly 2 times as long as the hyphen, can’t be a solution to the problem! – Devon Mar 30 '18 at 9:25
  • 1
    @Devon Thanks for the hint. Often I see Em Dashes used in such situations (with a little help from MS Word maybe) and that looks much stranger than the En Dash. The Figure Dash might be a better option. The Non-Breaking Hyphen would be the best choice, but not all fonts include it. – Ĵоħп Đое Mar 30 '18 at 15:44

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