Eraldusmärgiga

Eraldusmärgiga is a term used in Estonian-language technical writing to describe items that include a separating mark, or delimiter, within the string. In this sense, it marks a form where subparts or values are distinguished by a symbol such as a hyphen, colon, slash, or dash. The term is most common in linguistic, computational, and bibliographic contexts, where parsing or interpretation depends on the presence of a delimiter.

Etymology and morphology: The word is built from eraldusmärk meaning separating or distinguishing mark, together with märg meaning mark, and the instrumental suffix -iga meaning "with." The compound conveys the sense of "with a separating mark."

Usage: In dictionaries, corpora, data formats, and programming documentation, eraldusmärgiga is used to describe strings or entries that intentionally contain a delimiter. Examples include "name: value," "city-state," or "date-2024-06-01." The label helps readers and software parsers recognize that the element should be split into components for processing.

Relation and scope: The term is niche and largely confined to Estonian-language material. In other languages, corresponding concepts are described with generic terms such as delimiter-bearing, delimited, or hyphenated forms. There is no single universal standard for its use outside specific glossaries.

See also: delimiter, hyphen, colon, dash, tokenization, parsing.