Writing systems that use Chinese characters also include various punctuation marks, derived from both Chinese and Western sources. Historically, judou (Шаблон:Zhi) annotations were often used to indicate the boundaries of sentences and clauses in text. The use of punctuation in Written Chinese only became mandatory during the 20th century, due to Western influence. Unlike modern punctuation, judou marks were added by scholars for pedagogical purposes and were not viewed as integral to the text. Texts were therefore generally transmitted without judou. In most cases, this practice did not interfere with the interpretation of a text, although it occasionally resulted in ambiguity.Шаблон:Efn-ua
The first book to be printed with modern punctuation was Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy (Шаблон:Lang) by Hu Shih, published in 1919. Traditional poetry and calligraphy maintains the punctuation-free style. However, most editions of classical texts published since the 1930s are punctuated with fully modern punctuation (or at least using the modern equivalents of the traditional judou marks).
Many ancient Chinese books contain thousands of words with no spaces between them; however, when necessary to explicitly denote a pause or break, Judou marks such as "Шаблон:Lang" and "Шаблон:Lang" were used.
Because of this, East Asian punctuation marks are larger than their European counterparts, as they should occupy a square area that is the same size as the characters around them. These punctuation marks are called fullwidth to contrast them from halfwidth European punctuation marks.
Chinese characters can be written horizontally or vertically. Some punctuation marks adapt to this change in direction: the parentheses, square brackets, square quotation marks, book title marks, ellipsis marks, and dashes all rotate 90° clockwise when used in vertical text.
The three underline-like punctuation marks in Chinese (proper noun mark, wavy book title mark, and emphasis mark) rotate and shift to the left side of the text in vertical script (shifting to the right side of the text is also possible, but this is outmoded and can clash with the placement of other punctuation marks).
Marks similar to European punctuation
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:[4][5]
Шаблон:Lang (U+FF0C Шаблон:Sc) is the comma (,). It cannot be used for enumerating a list; see "enumeration comma" below.
Simplified Chineseofficially 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: Шаблон:Lang.
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 (Шаблон:Lang), are used as in Traditional Chinese. However, corner brackets are commonly encountered in situations that normally necessitate European punctuation, including in official contexts and media.[8]
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 "Шаблон:Lang" or more often as "Шаблон:Lang", without any word for "and", see picture to the right.[5]
Chinese uses a middle dot to separate characters in non-Han personal names, such as Tibetan, Uyghur, etc. For example "Nur Bekri" (Шаблон:Lang), the name of a Chinese politician of Uyghur descent is rendered as "Шаблон:Lang". "Leonardo da Vinci" is often transcribed to Mandarin as: Шаблон:Lang. The middle dot is also fullwidth in printed matter, while the halfwidth middle dot (Шаблон:Lang) is also used in computer input, which is then rendered as fullwidth in Chinese-language fonts.
The latter is used when embedded within the former: Шаблон:Lang. Although Шаблон:Lang (wavy underline, U+FE4F Шаблон:Sc) 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.[5][6]
Similarly, the two-em dash (Шаблон:Unichar) 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.[1] To represent the two-em dash character (Шаблон:Lang), one can write two consecutive em dashes (Шаблон:Lang, U+2014 U+2014). Chinese Шаблон:Lang is Шаблон:Zh.
When connecting two words to signify a range, Chinese generally uses an en dash occupying the space of one character (e.g. Шаблон:Lang "January to July", which can also be written 1月到7月, with the character 到 in place of the dash). A single em dash character or a tilde may also be used.[15]
The wave dash (Шаблон:Unichar, Шаблон:Zh) is used in the Chinese language to signify a range (e.g. 5～20個字 "5 to 20 words"). Additionally, there is another Unicode character called the fullwidthtilde (Шаблон:Unichar, Шаблон:Zh) 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. circa 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 ( Шаблон:Lang ) and the fullwidth tilde ( Шаблон:Lang ) should not be confused with the wavy dash character (Шаблон:Unichar, Шаблон:Zh). 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. Шаблон:Lang "waaah") or to indicate stress in places where English would employ an emphatic tone marked variously by italics or bolding (e.g. Шаблон:Lang "I want it!").[5]
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. ChineseШаблон:Snd particularly classical ChineseШаблон:Snd 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 Шаблон:Sc).
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 Шаблон:Lang (Former President, Lord Chiang), in which the preceding space serves as an honorific marker for Шаблон:Lang. This use is also still current in very formal letters or other old-style documents,[5] as well as religious scripture.
When Chinese is romanized, spaces are used to assist in reading. Rules vary between systems but most commonlyШаблон:Snd as in Hanyu PinyinШаблон:Snd the spaces properly occur between semantic divisions (i.e., words) but in practice are often placed between phonetic divisions (i.e., individual characters). In the Wade–Giles system, separate characters within a word were noted by hyphens but this is increasingly uncommon.
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".
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.
A proper name mark (an underline) is occasionally used, especially in teaching materials and some moviesubtitles. 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).
A title mark is a wavy underline (Шаблон:Lang, U+FE4F Шаблон:Sc) used instead of the regular book title marks whenever the proper noun mark is used in the same text.
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 text-emphasis-style.
A death-indication mark [zh] (simplified Chinese: 示亡号; traditional Chinese: 示亡號; pinyin: shìwánghào) 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 林穗芳 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.[16]
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.
Use of punctuation marks
Шаблон:Unreferenced section
Several punctuation marks have ranges of use that differ from the way they are used in English, though some functions may overlap.
Шаблон:Lang The comma is used to join clauses that deal with a certain topic or line of thinking. As such, what would appear to an English speaker to be a comma splice is very commonly seen in Chinese writing. Often, the entirety of a long paragraph can consist of clauses joined by commas, with the sole period coming only at the end. Unlike in English, a comma is allowed between a subject and its predicate.
Шаблон:Lang The semicolon is frequently used to demarcate parallel structures in a paragraph.
Шаблон:Lang Quotation marks, in addition to being used around quotations, are also commonly used for emphasis and to indicate proper nouns and titles, and also to enclose metaphors that do not explicitly state it is a metaphor. (e.g. 「毛球」跑出來了, i.e. The 'hairball' ran out.)
Шаблон:Lang The use of a second em dash to close a parenthetical thought is rare. Instead, a comma is usually used, or sometimes no punctuation at all.
In Pinyin, the apostrophe (') (Шаблон:Linktext, géyīn fúhào, 'syllable-dividing mark') is before a syllable starting with a vowel (a, o, or e) in a multiple-syllable word when the syllable does not start the word. It is commonly thought that this apostrophe should be used when there could be ambiguity regarding the syllables used (e.g. xian and Xi'an or bing'an and bin'gan).
