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Chinese punctuation

Chinese punctuation is the punctuation system used in writing of Chinese. The standard in all Sinophone regions, including mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, are almost same.

History

The earliest prototype of punctuation in Chinese can be found in oracle bone script. In Guo Moruo's work General Anthology of Divination Inscriptions (, a collection of oracle bone script, written in 1933), in the 430th text, it showed from left to right "" which has 2 lines between them. These lines help to make texts independent. In Eastern and Western Han Dynasty, there were 13 punctuations observed in the sources. This proved that early Chinese had already started to use punctuations; however, due to a lot of reasons, e.g. ignorance from government, lack of standard system, punctuation is still not common-seen in old Chinese texts. This is the reason for students in Ancient Chinese that they had to learn (), the skill of reading books.

For example, this passage "" in Mencius 7B "Wholeheartedly" () has been punctuated as ""; or as ""; or as "". The first was given by the Han dynasty scholar Zhao Qi () and was the traditional reading accepted by Song scholar Zhu Xi, Qing scholar , etc. The second reading is favored by 13th-century scholars Liu Changshi (劉昌詩), , etc. The third reading is proposed by modern scholars Wang Changlin (2002, 64) as well as Qin Hualin & Ling Yu (2005, 31).

The first book to be printed with modern punctuation was Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy () by Hu Shih, published in 1919. Since 2011, the use of punctuation in mainland China is regulated by Chinese national standard GB/T 15834–2011 "General rules for punctuation" ().

List of punctuation

The table is based on GB/T 15834–2011 "General rules for punctuation", the document by Standardization Administration of China, mainland Chinese government. If the difference exists in Hong Kong, Taiwan, or other Chinese-speaking world, it will be labelled out.

Marks imported from Europe are fullwidth instead of halfwidth like their original European counterparts, thus incorporating more space, and no longer need to be followed by an additional space in typesetting:

  • (U+3000 ) is the space, but takes the width of a full hanzi.
  • ， (U+FF0C ) is the comma (,). It cannot be used for enumerating a list; see "enumeration comma" below.
  • ！ (U+FF01 ) is the exclamation mark (!).
  • ？ (U+FF1F ) is the question mark (?).
  • ； (U+FF1B ) is the semicolon (;).
  • ： (U+FF1A ) is the colon (:).
  • （ ） (U+FF08 ), (U+FF09 ) are parentheses (round brackets).
  • There are two kinds of square brackets:
  • ［］ (U+FF3B ), (U+FF3D )
  • 【 】 (U+3010 ), (U+3011 )

Other punctuation symbols are more different, in shape or usage:

More details

Period ()

The Chinese period (U+3002 ) is a fullwidth small circle (). In horizontal writing, the period is placed in the middle <span style="border: 1px dotted red;"></span>, however in Mainland China it is placed in the bottom left <span style="border: 1px dotted red;"></span>; in vertical writing, it is placed below and to the right of the last character <span style="border: 1px dotted red;"></span>(U+FE12 ) in Mainland China, and in the middle <span style="border: 1px dotted red;"></span> in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

Quotation marks ()

Traditional Chinese does not use European quotation marks. Its double and single quotation marks are fullwidth (U+300E , U+300F ) and (U+300C , U+300D ). The double quotation marks are used when embedded within single quotation marks: . In vertical text, quotation marks are rotated 90° clockwise ( (U+FE41 , U+FE42 )).
Simplified Chinese officially prescribes European-style quotation marks for horizontal text and Chinese quotation marks for vertical text. Single quotation marks are used when embedded within double quotation marks: .
These quotation marks are fullwidth in printed matter but share the same codepoints as the European quotation marks in Unicode, so they require a Chinese-language font to be displayed correctly. In vertical text, corner brackets rotated 90° clockwise (), are used similar to Traditional Chinese but in reverse clamping order, with double quotation on the outside and single quotation on the inside. However, corner brackets are commonly encountered in situations that normally necessitate European punctuation, including in official contexts and media.

Enumeration comma ()

The enumeration comma (U+3001 ) or "dun comma" () must be used instead of the regular comma when separating words constituting a list.
Chinese language does not traditionally observe the English custom of a serial comma (the comma before conjunctions in a list), although the issue is of little consequence in Chinese at any rate, as the English "A, B, and C" is more likely to be rendered in Chinese as "" or more often as "", without any word for "and", see picture to the right.

Middle dot ()

Chinese uses a middle dot to separate characters in non-Han personal names, such as Tibetan, Uyghur, etc. For example "Nur Bekri" (), the name of a Chinese politician of Uyghur descent is rendered as "". "Leonardo da Vinci" is often transcribed to Mandarin as: . The middle dot is also fullwidth in printed matter, while the halfwidth middle dot [·] is also used in computer input, which is then rendered as fullwidth in Chinese-language fonts.
In Taiwan, the hyphenation point ([‧], U+2027 ) is used instead for the same purpose. They can also be used to represent decimal points in Chinese. For example "3.5" becomes .

Title marks ()

For titles of books, films, and so on, Simplified Chinese officially uses fullwidth double angle brackets (U+300A , U+300B ), and fullwidth single angle brackets (U+3008 , U+3009 ).
The latter is used when embedded within the former: . Although (wavy underline, U+FE4F ) is the officially prescribed title mark by Taiwan's Ministry of Education (especially for handwriting), when typing, square brackets and double quotation marks are also de facto used, if not prescribed by dictionaries in a manner akin to Korean and Japanese; Simplified Chinese often does likewise for song titles. In practice, Traditional Chinese, single title marks are also used for articles in or sections of a book, a rule that is also officially prescribed for Simplified Chinese.
Furthermore, unsanctioned and alternate usage of Western or Chinese quotation marks is rather common, especially so for Chinese quotation marks in Traditional Chinese newspapers; this "unsanctioned practice" is also commonly found in Japanese and Korean.

Ellipsis ()

In Chinese, the ellipsis is written with six dots (not three) occupying the same space as two characters in the center of a line.
Unicode provides an explicitly centered character in addition to the inexplicit character.

Two-em dash ()

Similarly, the two-em dash () is written so that it occupies the space of two em dash characters in the center of the line. There should be no breaking in the line. To represent the two-em dash character ([⸺]), one can write two consecutive em dashes ([——], U+2014 U+2014). Chinese is .

En dash ()

When connecting two words to signify a range, Chinese generally uses an en dash occupying the space of one character (e.g. "January to July", which can also be written 1月至7月, with the character 至 in place of the dash). A single em dash character or a tilde may also be used.

Wave dash ()

The wave dash (, ) is used in the Chinese language to signify a numerical range (e.g. 5～20個字 "5 to 20 words"). Additionally, there is another Unicode character called the fullwidth tilde (, ) which is often used as an alternative form of the wave dash symbol. The wave dash is more commonly but not exclusively used when the numbers are estimates (e.g. dates and temperatures in weather forecasts).
For the most part, however, the en dash and wavy dash are interchangeable; usage is largely a matter of personal taste or institutional style. Note that the wave dash ([〜]) and the fullwidth tilde ([～]) should not be confused with the wavy dash character (, ). In Japanese, the wavy dash is used as an emphatic form of the katakana-hiragana prolonged sound mark.
In informal use (such as texting), wavy dashes are also used to indicate a prolonged vowel similar to informal English's repeated letters (e.g. "waaah") or to indicate stress in places where English would employ an emphatic tone marked variously by italics or bolding (e.g. "I want it!").

Spacing

Similar to the spacing between letters (kerning) in European languages, Chinese writing uses a very narrow space between characters, though it does not observe the equivalent to the wider space between words except on rare occasions. Chinese particularly classical Chinese is thus a form of scriptio continua and it is common for words to be split between lines with no marking in the text equivalent to the English hyphen.
When a space is used, it is also fullwidth (U+3000 : ).
One instance of its usage is as an honorific marker. A modern example in 20th century Taiwan, is found in the reference to Chiang Kai-shek as (Former President, Lord Chiang), in which the preceding space serves as an honorific marker for . This use is also still current in very formal letters or other old-style documents, as well as religious scripture.

Asterisk ( )

Mainland Chinese supply chains often use an asterisk in place of a multiplication sign (×) to specify product dimensions. For example "10×200×350" becomes "10*200*350".

Typographic styles

The following are commonly suggested typographical styles; however, they are rarely carried out in practice and often only used when necessary. Proper name marks and title marks are primarily used in textbooks and official documents in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.

Proper name mark ( )
A proper name mark (an underline) is occasionally used, especially in teaching materials and some movie subtitles. When the text runs vertically, the appropriate name mark is written as a line to the characters' left (to the right in some older books).
Title mark ( )
A title mark is a wavy underline (, U+FE4F ) used instead of the regular book title marks whenever the proper noun mark is used in the same text.
Emphasis mark
For emphasis, Chinese uses emphasis marks instead of italic type. Each emphasis mark is a single dot placed under each character to be emphasized (for vertical text, the dot is placed to the right-hand side of each character). Although frequent in printed matter, emphasis marks are rare online, as most word processors do not support them. However, support in HTML has been possible by adding the CSS property <code>text-emphasis-style</code>.
Death-indication mark ()
A death-indication mark () marks a person's recent death. Typographically, it consists of a black border around the person's name. It is supported by most word processors and is supported in CSS through the border property. It is used in lists or bibliographical data, for example. Lin Suifang () suggests that this practice may have entered the Chinese language in the fifties when it was supposedly adopted from translations from Russian; he does not cite any sources for this statement, however.

Apostrophe

There is no equivalent of the apostrophe in Chinese. Therefore, it is omitted in translated foreign names such as "O'Neill". Likewise, the hyphen is used only when writing translated foreign names with hyphens. Otherwise, it is not used in Chinese and is omitted when translating compound words.

See also

Notes

References

External links

  • – official website of the Revised Handbook of Punctuation, December 2008 Edition
  • Chinese punctuation marks manual, published by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China
  • Revised Handbook of Punctuation was published in December 2008 by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China (Taiwan)
  • – The PRC's National Standards on the Usage of Punctuation Marks
  • The Unicode Consortium