Multiple section for an article marked with schema.org/Article

Question

Suppose to have an article in an HTML Web page. The aim is to markup the content using such a schema (I prefer those provided by schema.org). Hence, one starts to markup the contents by following the schema.org/Article. The point is, if the article belongs to multiple sections, should one put each section in a separate span as follows:

<span itemprop="articleSection">Section1</span> -
<span itemprop="articleSection">Section2</span> -
<span itemprop="articleSection">Section3</span>

or it is equivalent to let them in a unique span like in the following?

<span itemprop="articleSection">Section1 - Section2 - Section3</span>

Answer 1

If your article is part of many different sections, then you should mark each one as a articleSection like in your first example:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">
  <span itemprop="name">President to throw ceremonial first pitch at Nationals Park</span>
  by <span itemprop="author">John Smith</span>
  <span itemprop="articleSection">Sports</span> -
  <span itemprop="articleSection">Politics</span> -
  <span itemprop="articleSection">US News</span>
</div>