Chapter and verse

A document really has to be pretty large before you can call its subdivisions “chapters”. We’re talking a small book, not a ten-pager.

The Dutch term hoofdstuk is used for the main subdivisions of even quite small documents, but then sounds a bit silly in English. You’re generally better off calling it a:

  • section
  • heading
  • part

Chapters in the Bible aren’t always very big, though.

Prevalence: high. The one-to-one correspondence between the standard NL and EN terms is assumed.
Frequency: very high. If the error occurs at all, you can be almost certain that there will be multiple instances in the document. After all, it’s bound to have more than one hoofdstuk.
Native: no. We reserve chapter for books, basically.

Published by Mike Wilkinson

Twenty years of translating and editing Dutch into English, as well as writing and publishing in English.

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