Learning French: the meaning of tiret du six versus tiret du huit

Have you ever had to orally ‘spell out’ your email address in French?

You may have stumbled over the correct translations of certain symbols such as a hyphen or underscore.

We look at how to distinguish between these different tirets and explain how cultural keyboard influences could lead to further confusion.

The word tiret most often translates as ‘dash’ or ‘hyphen,’ but can also refer to an underscore.

Since the French do not have distinct words to refer to these symbols, they usually differentiate by saying tiret du six (hyphen) or tiret du huit (underscore).

Hyphens are more widely used due to their function as a punctuation mark, whereas underscores are mainly reserved for technical language or computer codes.

These differing contexts can also help to distinguish one tiret from the other.

The references to the numbers six (six) and huit (eight) are connected to the placement of dash symbols on a keyboard - specifically, the French AZERTY keyboard.

This can lead to confusion for English speakers who are usually most used to typing with a QWERTY keyboard. However, buttons and keys have a different layout depending on where you are in

the world, and some may feature a different alphabet altogether.

Perhaps if you have tried changing the language settings on your phone into French, you will have noticed that the first two letters on the top line of keys switch from QW to AZ.

One of the most noticeable shifts between QWERTY and AZERTY keyboards is the placement of symbols and punctuation marks.

As you can see, pressing the ‘6’ key on a French keyboard indicates a hyphen [ - ] and ‘8’ leads to an underscore [ _ ].

Here, SHIFT+6 usually creates a caret [ ^ ] and SHIFT+8 makes an asterisk [ * ]. These symbols can also differ depending on the QWERTY in question. 

The French reference to tiret du six/huit therefore makes no sense if translated literally into English.

Read also: 10 French words and phrases that are untranslatable in English

You will say this when orally communicating a series of dash symbols or codes:

Mettez un tiret du six entre chaque mot pour que le moteur de recherche comprenne qu'il s'agisse d'idées distinctes. - Put a dash between each word so the search engine understands they

refer to separate ideas. 

Mon adresse mail est: john tiret du huit smith arobase email point com. - My email address is: john underscore smith at email dot com [[email protected]]. 

Note: The French word for [ @ ] is arobase, pronounced: arrrow-baz. Remember to use the throaty French 'R' sound when saying this out loud. 

Similarly, the French word for a dot [ . ] is point, pronounced:  pwahn. 

It is completely neutral language that can be used in any situation from formal to informal. 

You will most likely use this in spoken French when ‘spelling out’ an email address or web link to colleagues, clients for example.