Gershayim

Gershayim (, without niqqud ), also occasionally grashayim (), can refer to either of two distinct typographical marks in the Hebrew language. The name means "double geresh".

Punctuation mark

Gershayim most commonly refers to the punctuation mark . It is always written before the last letter of the non-inflected form of a word or numeral. It is used in the following ways:

• To indicate Hebrew abbreviations. For example: (singular), (plural), "report" represents ; and (masculine), (feminine), "squad commander" represents .
• To indicate a multi-digit Hebrew numerals. For example: represents 18.
• To indicate the names of Hebrew letters, differentiating them from any homographs. Compare "he sketched an eye" with "he sketched an ayin".
• To indicate Hebrew word roots. For example: the root of "crossword puzzles" is (š—b—ṣ); the root of "to tilt, to conjugate" is (n—ṭ—h); and the root of "being synchronized" is (s–n–k–r–n).
• In older texts, to indicate the transliteration of a foreign word. This use corresponds to the English language's use of italic type. For example, in printed works of Rashi, the town of Rashi's birth, Troyes, is spelled .

Cantillation mark

Gershayim is a disjunctive cantillation accent in the Hebrew Bible: . It is placed above the stressed syllable, as in , in Genesis 22:3.

Computer encoding

Most keyboards do not have a key for the gershayim punctuation; as a result, a quotation mark is often substituted for it. The cantillation accent however is generally not typed, as it plays a completely different role and can occur in the middle of words (it does not mark any word separation), or marked using a different interlinear notation if needed (such as superscripts or other notational symbols).

See also

• Hebrew alphabet
• Hebrew diacritics
• Hebrew punctuation

References