  A family $\mathcal{F}$ of permutations of the vertices of a hypergraph $H$ is
called 'pairwise suitable' for $H$ if, for every pair of disjoint edges in $H$,
there exists a permutation in $\mathcal{F}$ in which all the vertices in one
edge precede those in the other. The cardinality of a smallest such family of
permutations for $H$ is called the 'separation dimension' of $H$ and is denoted
by $\pi(H)$. Equivalently, $\pi(H)$ is the smallest natural number $k$ so that
the vertices of $H$ can be embedded in $\mathbb{R}^k$ such that any two
disjoint edges of $H$ can be separated by a hyperplane normal to one of the
axes. We show that the separation dimension of a hypergraph $H$ is equal to the
'boxicity' of the line graph of $H$. This connection helps us in borrowing
results and techniques from the extensive literature on boxicity to study the
concept of separation dimension.
