The stressed disjunctive conjunction o

[Nfqufktc]

¡Hola!

Here is the sentence from a Spanish recipe (from an exercise book)
Ponga Ud. el gazpacho frío en el refrigerador por una ó dos horas.
Put the cold gazpacho in the refrigerator for 1 to 2 hours.

Would you clarify why the disjunctive conjunction o is graphically stressed in the above sentence?

Why are the above samples different?

Thank you.

[wrholt]

Writing o as ó is customary, perhaps obligatory, when the word appears between two numbers that are written using digits, primarily to make sure that the reader does not confuse it with the digit 0: consider "... por 1 ó 2 horas", especially if written by hand rather than typed.

Strictly speaking, writing ó between two numbers written as words rather than as digits is not necessary.

[aleCcowaN]

I totally agree, and add that ó should be used even when there's only one number written with digits ("3 ó cuatro días").

However RAE dissagrees, and from the 2010 reform on, o is never written with a stress mark on it. And I tell RAE that "vayan y que los surzan" with their ukases.

Modern writing and printing methods have made rules like ó or E instead of É unnecessary.

However, I still use many good o'le rules when ambiguity is potentially present, and the problem is not 1 o 2 being read as 102 because typography is ambiguous but sloppy readers just browsing content and feeling justified in thinking it's 102 in a they're-eating-the-dogs way.

Back to the original question, I'd bet the person who wrote "una ó dos horas" mistakenly extended the "7 u 8 minutos" auditive rule to de "1 ó 2" visual rule, something that is known as hypercorrection.

[Nfqufktc]

Thank you all.

[poli]

¿Zurzir?

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

@Poli: "Zurcir". The verb means "to darn", but "que los zurzan" is an expression to show contempt for the académicos and how they change the rules we learned to respect. An expression I also subscribe about this, by the way.