Chinese punctuation

Chinese punctuation uses a different set of punctuation marks from European languages. Chinese punctuation only became an integral part of the written language in the 20th century The first book to be printed with modern punctuation was Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy (中國哲學史大綱) by Hu Shi (胡適), published in 1919. Scholars did,^[1] however, annotate texts with symbols resembling the modern '。' and '、' (see below) to indicate full-stops and pauses, respectively. Traditional poetry and calligraphy maintains the punctuation-free style.

Nearly all East Asian punctuation marks are larger than their European counterparts and 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, curved brackets, square quotation marks, book title marks, ellipsis mark and dash 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).

There are major differences between European and Chinese punctuation marks.

Marks similar to European punctuation

Marks imported from Europe differ in size: they are fullwidth instead of halfwidth:

• ， is the comma (,). It cannot be used for enumerating a list; see "enumeration comma" below.
• ！ is the exclamation mark (!).
• ？ is the question mark (?).
• ； is the semicolon (;).
• ： is the colon (:).
• （ ） are brackets or parentheses (( )).
• 【 】 or ［］ are square brackets ([ ]).

Other punctuation marks

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

Punctuations

Full stop ( 。 )

The Chinese full stop is a fullwidth small circle (simplified Chinese: 句号; traditional Chinese: 句號; pinyin: jùhào). In horizontal writing, 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.

Quotation marks ( 「...」 , ﹁...﹂ , “...” )

• In Traditional Chinese, the double and single quotation marks are fullwidth 『 』 and 「 」. The double quotation marks are used when embedded within single quotation marks: 「...『...』...」. In vertical text, quotation marks are rotated 90° clockwise (﹁﹂). European-style quotation marks “” and ‘’ can also be used for horizontal text.
• In Simplified Chinese, the European-style quotation marks are always used in horizontal text. Here, 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 as in Traditional Chinese. Although Simplified Chinese is usually written horizontally, corner brackets are commonly encountered in vertically-printed newspaper headlines.

A sign in a Zhuhai park, which, if we reproduce enumeration commas in English, can be rendered nearly word-for-word as: "It is strictly forbidden to collect flowers、 leaves、fruit, dig out roots、 medicinal plants!"

Enumeration comma ( 、 )

The enumeration comma, known as the "pause mark" in Chinese (simplified Chinese: 顿号; traditional Chinese: 頓號; pinyin: dùnhào; literally "pause mark"), 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 (extra comma before and or or 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 "A、 B 、 C", without using a conjunction such as 和 or 与/與.

Middle dot ( · )

Chinese uses a middle dot to separate words in a foreign name, since native surname and given names in Chinese are not separated using any punctuation or spaces. For example, "Leonardo da Vinci" in simplified Chinese: "列奥纳多·达·芬奇" and traditional Chinese: "李奧納多·達·文西". In Chinese, the middle dot is also fullwidth in printed matter, but the halfwidth middle dot (·) is used in computer input, which is then rendered as fullwidth in Chinese-language fonts.

Book title marks ( 《... 》 )

For book and film titles, Chinese uses fullwidth double angle brackets^[2] 《...》, and fullwidth single angle brackets, 〈...〉. The latter is used when embedded within the former: 《...〈...〉...》. In Traditional Chinese, single title marks are also used for articles in or sections of a book whereas Simplified Chinese used double title marks for all titles.

Ellipsis ( …… )

In Chinese, the ellipsis is written with six dots (not three) occupying the same space as two characters in the center of the line.

Em dash ( —— )

Similarly, the em dash is written so that it occupies the space of two characters in the center of the line. There should be no breaking in the line. Chinese dash is 破折号 (pinyin: pòzhéhào).

En dash ( — )

When connecting two words to signify a range, Chinese generally uses a fullwidth en dash occupying the space of one character (e.g. 1月—7月 "January to July").

Wavy dash ( ～ )

The wavy dash can also signify a range in Chinese (e.g. 5～20个字 "5 to 20 words"). It 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. Two wavy dashes indicate a prolonged vowel in quoted speech (e.g. 哇～～ "waaah").

Spacing

While European languages use a narrow space between each letter, and a wider space between words, Chinese does not observe the latter. In this aspect, it somewhat resembles the scriptio continua of ancient Greek and Latin.

There are a small number of exceptions. A modern example, found in Taiwan, is that of referring to Chiang Kai-shek as 先總統　蔣公 (Former President, Lord Chiang), where the space is an honorific marker for 蔣公; this use is also still current in very formal letters or other old-style documents.

Also, when Chinese is written entirely in Hanyu Pinyin, spaces are always introduced to assist in reading.

Typographic styles

The following are commonly suggested typographical styles; however, they are rarely carried out in practice, often only used when necessary.

Proper name mark ( __ )

A proper name mark (an underline) is occasionally used, especially in teaching materials and some movie subtitles. For consistency in style, a wavy underline (﹏﹏) is used instead of the regular book title marks whenever the proper noun mark is used in the same text. When the text runs vertically, the proper name mark is written as a line to the left of the characters (to the right in some older books).

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 left hand side of each character). Although frequent in printed matter, emphasis marks are rare online, as they cannot be represented as plain text, are not supported by HTML and most word processors, and otherwise inconvenient to input.

Other notes

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

Use of punctuation marks

Several punctuation marks have ranges of use that differ from the way they are used in English, though some functions may overlap.

• ， The comma is used to join together 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.
• ？ The question mark is used as in English, with the additional function of being used with indirect questions. Examples: "Whether he was of legal age? was the key question." "I was wondering where you went?"
• ； The semicolon is frequently used to demarcate parallel structures in a paragraph.
• 「...」 Quotation marks, in addition to being used around quotations, are also commonly used for emphasis and to indicate proper nouns and titles.
• —— 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.

See also

• East Asian punctuation (disambiguation)

References

1. ^ The History of the Song Dynasty (1346) states 「凡所讀書，無不加標點」 (Among those who read texts, there are none who do not add punctuation).
2. ^ "CJK Symbols and Punctuation". The Unicode Consortium. http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U3000.pdf. Retrieved 6 November 2009. 

External links

• 重訂標點符號手冊 Chinese punctuation marks manual, published by Taiwan's Ministry of Education.
• 中華人民共和國國家標準標點符號用法 The PRC's National Standards on the Usage of Punctuation Marks (Chinese)