Diple (textual symbol)

Diple periestigmene (dotted diple) according to the variants in the Proposal for the Universal Character Set by Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, 2003.

This article is about a textual symbol. For the musical instrument, see Diple.

Diple (Ancient Greek: διπλῆ, meaning double, referring to the two lines in the mark >) was used in margins to draw attention to something in text. It is sometimes also called antilambda^{[citation needed]} because the sign resembles a Greek capital letter lambda (Λ) turned upon its side. In some ways its usage was similar to modern day quotation marks and the so called French quotation marks (») are derived from it.

Isidore remarks in his Etymologiae (I.XXI.13) [1] that diple was used to mark the quotations from Bible. He also talks about diple peri strichon (or sticon) which was used to draw attention separate concepts and diple periestigmene what was used to mark dubious passages (in this respect its usage was similar to obelos). Diple obolismene was used according to Isidore to separate sentences in comedies and tragedies, so its usage was similar to that of paragraphos.

See also

• Usenet quoting
• obelos
• coronis

External links

• Punctuation