'Punctuation\' marks are written symbols that do not correspond to either phonemes (sounds) of a spoken language nor to lexemes (words and phrases) of a written language, but which serve to organize or clarify written language. See orthography.
The rules of what punctuation marks should be used in what circumstances vary with language, location and time. 21st centuryAmerican English is very different to 15th centuryItalian. The rules are constantly evolving and certain aspects of punctuation are style — the author's choice. An English language bibliography may be found at the end of this article.
Because of the limited number of characters available in ASCII, many of these punctuation characters have also been given specialized meanings in computer programs composed on ASCII keyboards. The dot and commercial at in e-mail addresses are examples of this kind of use. See the individual articles.
The individual articles listed below include information on use and misuse in English and provide examples:
space between words to provide interword separation. Because the interword space has no mark, it is arguably not a "written symbol", but it clearly serves to organize and clarify Latin script writings.
The following typographical symbols or glyphs are not true punctuation marks:
Also related are diacritical marks (or diacritics), which serve to distinguish among similar sounds using the same primary letter symbol, or to clarify emphasis or tone.
Each script, and each language within a script, can have its own set of punctuation marks and usage conventions.
Chinese and Japanese use a different set of punctuation marks.
Some punctuation marks are similar to their equivalent Western ones, but larger, to suit the characters that surround the mark, for example, the Chinese comma (、) is both larger than its Western counterpart and faces the opposite direction.
Chinese and Japanese period is a small circle (。). In Japanese written horizontally the period 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. In Chinese the period is always after the last character and in the middle (rather than at the bottom) of the line.
When the text is written vertically, the quotation marks 『』 and 「」 are used; but when the text is written horizontally both the above quotation marks and the English quotation marks, “” and ‘’, can be used.
In Chinese in addition, there are book title marks, 《book title》, (what in English rendered as italicization or underlining); and chapter marks, 〈chapter title〉, (what in English would be quotation marks).
Caesura sign (頓號 or 顿号 in pinyin: dun4 hao4), nicknamed sesame dot, is the Chinese equivalent of serial comma. It is shaped like a teardrop with the narrow sharp end pointing top-left and round end pointing bottom-right: 、 (it may be depicted on your computer in another font). In Japanese, the Chinese caesura sign is used as comma (serial or not).
Partition sign is a dot at the centre of a character space: ‧. See middle dot
Proper noun mark, which exist as underline beneath the noun, is occasionally used in Chinese (in teaching materials and some moviesubtitles). When the text runs vertically, the proper name mark is written as a line to the left of the characters.
Korean, the third member language of CJK, currently uses Western punctuation.
