Typography and printing

La sillabazione is hyphenation, and the two languages named the same operation after two different things — yet both names go back to a word meaning together, which is the opposite of what the operation does. English named it after the mark. « Hyphen » came through Latin from Greek huphen, a running together of hupo and hen, in one: the sign a scribe set under two words to say that they were to be read as a single word. Italian named it after the unit instead, la sillaba, and that word is Greek too — sullabe, from sun and lambanein, a taking together, the handful of sounds the voice grasps in one go. One language points at a joining mark, the other at a gathered handful, and the thing both are describing is a break. There is a practical consequence worth keeping. Italian has built no verb on the mark at all: the mark is il trattino, but nothing corresponds to « to hyphenate ». One says sillabare, or andare a capo for the break itself, and the setting in a page program is la sillabazione automatica.