From P. Jones
Pjones@t-online.de
As a professional crystallographer and amateur bird-watcher, I was
entertained by your report of crystals that were “red-kite shaped”
(Feedback, 31 January).
I must confess that I have not read the article in Chemical
Communications, but presume it comes from Germany and is an example of the
kind of problem that foreigners have with English.
If we move the typographically labile hyphen to a more probable position, we
get “red, kite-shaped”. The “kite-shape” in German is raute, a word
that cannot easily be translated—it is the “diamond” on a playing card. Of
course, “diamond” has another more specific meaning in crystallography.
