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The full stop is represented by a colon and vice versa.ĭue to its right to left writing nature, in Arabic (as well as languages that use Arabic script such as Farsi or Urdu) the question mark is written as a mirror image of the English question mark – so it looks backwards to native English speakers. In the South, quotation marks are equivalent to the ones used in English.įollowing the trend of unique question marks, in Armenian, the question mark takes the form of an open circle placed on the upper right corner of the last vowel of the question word. In the North, guillemets are the symbols used for quotes.
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While Chinese, Japanese, and Korean all use Western punctuation, it was only adopted by all three countries in the early 20 th century.Īs for Korean, different symbols are used for quotes based on the country in which something is written. As for question marks, these are not used outside of informal text messages, the internet, or letter writing between friends. In addition, there are no spaces in written Japanese. In Japanese, periods are open circles rather than a solid dot, commas are slanted the opposite way from English, and quotations are enclosed in corner-brackets. In turn, the semi-colon is noted as a raised dot in the text. In Modern Greek, the question mark looks like what English speakers consider to be a semi-colon. Punctuation in Other Languages Besides EnglishĪ great example is Spanish, which has an “upside down” question mark or exclamation point before the start of a question or exclamation. People began to use punctuation more sparingly for the sake of frugality, as typewriters functioned with expensive carbon-film ribbons, and punctuation marks required the same length of ribbon as a regular letter.Īs previously mentioned, many languages maintained their own punctuation even after the propagation of modern day Western punctuation. The use of punctuation was further refined with the development of the typewriter. Later, with the invention of movable type came a standard system of punctuation. The propagation of punctuation in the Western world came with the mass production of the Bible during Medieval times, when copyists began to include marks to aid in reading out loud. The Origin of Punctuation in Western Civilization Later on, other languages continued to develop their own forms of punctuation as well. In addition, the Romans occasionally used symbols to indicate pauses in the 1 st century BC, and by the AD 4 th century, punctuation became prevalent. The Greeks first used punctuation marks around the 5 th century BC. However, Chinese is a language which does not necessarily require punctuation by its nature. The Chinese developed punctuation marks which are now foreign to us in the Warring States period (475 BC – 221 BC), and those were used to indicate either the end of a chapter or a full stop. Initially, all writing systems were devoid of separation between words.
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Although modern day punctuation was more or less standardized across different languages around the 20 th century, many languages have also kept their older, traditional punctuation. In fact, punctuation was often not included by the writer, but left up to the reader’s discretion. In both rhetoric and drama, punctuation was an aid for reading out loud rather than the writing aid and stylistic element it has become today. Aside from rhetoric, the origin of punctuation can be attributed to drama, as famous Greek playwright Aristophanes is often credited with this development. The length of the pause for particular punctuation marks varied, and the list in order of shortest to longest goes as such: a comma, a colon, and a period. In classical rhetoric, punctuation was used to indicate where, and for how long, a speaker would pause during his or her speech.
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The Origin of Punctuation in Modern Languages However, modern day punctuation has evolved past the use for spoken language only, and the uses of various punctuation in other languages have as well… When orators prepared speeches in ancient Rome and Greece, symbols were used to mark where and for how long a speaker should pause. The origin of punctuation lies in classical rhetoric.