Punctuation
| Punctuation marks |
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apostrophe ( ' ) ( ’ ) |
| Other typographer's marks |
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ampersand ( & ) |
Punctuation marks are written symbols that do not correspond to either phonemes (sounds) of a spoken language nor to lexemes (words and phrases) of a written language, but which serve to organize or clarify written language. See orthography.
The rules of what punctuation marks should be used in what circumstances vary with language, location and time. The rules are constantly evolving and certain aspects of punctuation are style — the author's choice. An English language bibliography may be found at the end of this article.
| Contents |
Commonly-used punctuation marks
Some common examples used by English and other languages using the Roman alphabet are listed below (with their Unicode preferred names, where appropriate).
Because of the limited number of characters available in ASCII, many of these punctuation characters have also been given specialized meanings in computer programs composed on ASCII keyboards. The dot and commercial at in e-mail addresses are examples of this kind of use. See the individual articles.
The individual articles listed below include information on use and misuse in English and provide examples:
- apostrophe ( ' ), ( ’ )
- bracket - i.e., parentheses (aka round brackets) ((, )), square brackets ([, ]), curly brackets (aka braces) ({, }), and angle brackets (⟨, ⟩)
- colon (:)
- comma (,)
- dash – i.e., figure dash(‒), en dash (–), em dash (—), and quotation dash (―)
- ellipsis or suspension points (...)
- exclamation mark (!)
- full stop or period (.)
- hyphen (-), (‐)
- interrobang (‽) (symbol resembles a question mark laid over an exclamation mark)
- question mark (?)
- quotation marks (British English: inverted commas) and guillemets ('; ‘, ’; "; “,”; ‹, ›)
- semicolon (;)
- slash or solidus (/)
- space between words to provide interword separation. Because the interword space has no mark, it is arguably not a "written symbol", but it clearly serves to organize and clarify Latin script writings.
The following typographical symbols or glyphs are not true punctuation marks:
- ampersand (&)
- asterisk (*)
- asterism (⁂)
- bullet (•; more)
- at (@)
- currency (¤)
- dagger or obelisk (†) and double dagger (‡)
- number sign (#) – aka pound sign, hash, crosshatch, octothorpe, etc.
- prime ( ′ )
- tilde or swung dash (~)
- underscore ( _ )
- vertical bar (|)
- greater than sign ( > )
- less than sign ( < )
Also related are diacritical marks (or diacritics), which serve to distinguish among similar sounds using the same primary letter symbol, or to clarify emphasis or tone.
Each script, and each language within a script, can have its own set of punctuation marks and usage conventions.
East Asian punctuation
Chinese and Japanese use a different set of punctuation marks. These only came into use relatively recently, the ancient forms of these languages having no punctuation at all. Traditional poetry and calligraphy maintains this punctuation-free style.
Whilst Western languages use a narrow space between each letter, and a wider space between words, text in Chinese characters uses a narrow space between each character and no wider space between words. In this way it somewhat resembles the scriptio continua of ancient Greek and Latin.
- Some punctuation marks are similar to their equivalent Western ones, but larger and occupying a squarer area, to suit the characters that surround the mark:
- ！ is the exclamation mark (!).
- ？ is the question mark (?).
- ； is the semi-colon (;).
- ： is the colon (:).
- ，is the comma (,).
- （） are curved brackets or parentheses (()).
- 【】 are square brackets ([]).
- Other punctuation marks are a little more different than Western ones:
- The Chinese and Japanese full stop (or "period") is a small circle (。). In horizontally-written Japanese the full stop is placed in the same position as it would be in English; in vertical writing it is placed below and to the right of the last Character. In Chinese the full stop is always after the last character.
- When the text is written vertically, the quotation marks 『』 and 「」 are used; but when the text is written horizontally both the above quotation marks and the English quotation marks, “” and ‘’, can be used.
- In Chinese in addition, there are book title marks, 《book title》, (which in English rendered as italicization); and chapter marks, 〈chapter title〉, (which in English would be quotation marks).
- Caesura sign (頓號/顿号; pinyin: dùn hào), nicknamed sesame dot, is the Chinese equivalent of serial comma. It is shaped like a teardrop with the narrow sharp end pointing top-left and round end pointing bottom-right: 、 (it may be depicted on your computer in another font). In Japanese, the Chinese caesura sign is used as comma (serial or not).
- Partition sign is a dot at the centre of a character space: ·. One of its uses is to separate words in a foreign name (e.g. "Leonardo da Vinci" could be written in Simplified Chinese as "列奥那多·达·芬奇"). See middle dot
- Proper noun mark, which exist as underline beneath the noun, is occasionally used in Chinese (in teaching materials and some movie subtitles). When the text runs vertically, the proper name mark is written as a line to the left of the characters.
- In Chinese, the ellipsis is written with six dots (……), not three.
Korean, the third member language of CJK, currently uses Western punctuation.
Like Classical Chinese, traditional Mongolian employed no punctuation at all. But now as it uses the Cyrillic alphabet, its punctuations are similar, if not identical, to Russian.
Other scripts
In ancient forms of Roman script, the interpunct served to separate words.
Ethiopian languages, including Amharic, Tigrinya, Ge'ez, and Afaan Oromo, make use of the following punctuation marks:
- comma (resembles an English colon)
- sentence end (resembles four dots at the corners of an imaginary square)
- colon (resembels an English colon with two small horizontal lines, one above and one below)
- semicolon (resembles an English colon with a small horizontal line between the dots)
- preface colon (resembles an English colon with a small horizontal line between the dots but more to the right than in the semicolon)
- question mark (three dots in a vertical line)
- paragraph separator (seven dots: three in a vertical line flanked by two vertical lines of two dots each, appearing as the corners of a hexagon with a dot in the center)
See also Ethiopic Script.
Legal issues
A patent has been granted for two new punctuation marks, the question comma and the exclamation comma. [1]
Further reading
- Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation - Lynne Truss (Profile Books 2003 ISBN 1861976127)
- Punctuation - Robert Allen (Oxford University Press 2002)
- The King's English: a guide to modern usage - Kingsley Amis (HarperCollins 1997)
- The King's English - H. W. Fowler (Clarendon Press 1906)
- Plain Words: a guide to the use of English - Ernest Gowers ( HMSO 1948)
- Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West - M.B. Parkes (University of California Press 1993)
See also
External links
- Unicode reference glyphs for general punctuation
- Unicode reference glyphs for CJK symbols and punctuation
- Unicode reference glyphs for CJK compatibility forms
- Unicode reference glyphs for small form variants
- Unicode reference glyphs for halfwidth and fullwidth forms
- 標點符號的種類 (Types of Punctuation Marks) Chinese punctuation marks and their names (In Chinese)
- 中華人民共和國國家標準標點符號用法 (The People's Republic of China's National Standards on the Usage of Punctuation Marks) (In Chinese)
- Japanese Punctuation Marks
- Grammar & Punctuation Learning Resource