How to split long words in German?

Question

I wonder if the word "Anwendungsupdates" can be splitted in 2 separated words like: "Anwendungs updates" or it would be a grammatical error.

To be more specific, the problem I have is that this word is long, so it breaks the following table because of that word.

If it's not possible to split that word, how would you solve the issue? (So far, my best idea is to make the font smaller)

Answer 1

The ideal way to do this in HTML is to either use a hyphenation engine (many browsers support hyphenation natively when activated in CSS, for details please google, this is out of scope for this SE), or to manually include soft hyphen characters ­ in the HTML in long words.

    Anwendungs­updates

The soft hyphen character is normally invisible, but the HTML engine will split the word with a hyphen if needed.

Resize your browser window to test it here:

Anwendungs­updates Anwendungs­updates Anwendungs­updates Anwendungs­updates Anwendungs­updates Anwendungs­updates Anwendungs­updates

To just split it into two words Anwendungs Updates is indeed incorrect in German. You could decompose it into something like "Updates für die Anwendung" but you should know what you're doing for this to fit the context.