Questions tagged [punctuation]

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How is the period called when used in business names to indicate a company division?

I'm occasionally seeing the full stop used in multiple languages in the names of various business entities to indicate their subdivisions, e.g. Acme.Logistics, Yandex.Mail, ... Is there a specific ...
Mark's user avatar
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4 votes
0 answers
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Does any language add additional speech marks to the question and exclamation mark in writing?

In English (and any other languages I've studied) we have special marks which are used to identify questions (i.e. ?) and exclamations (i.e. !). Does any written language add additional markers to ...
Neil Tarrant's user avatar
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34 views

What is the term for how a colon is used as a key value separator in English, and are there other similar characters in other languages?

In English we often use colons as an informal term: definition separator or a key: value separator - like Birthdate: some date Is there a term for this form of usage, and are there other characters ...
user254694's user avatar
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0 answers
67 views

In general Western languages, how to terminate a phrase, which starts with a question but ends with a statement?

I just entered the following comment on a StackOverflow question: Is this a purely theoretical question, because sleep 5 without any quotes is working fine? I have no idea if this sentence is ...
Dominique's user avatar
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1 answer
163 views

What is the nature of punctuation marks, are they paralinguistc features; where are they studied?

I am not sure I understand the distinction between paralinguistic and extralinguistic. Let's eat, grandma. Here, grandma is the adressee of the message, the actor (invited). Grandma is the one to eat. ...
George Ntoulos's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
100 views

Historically, when was whitespace used versus interpuncts versus no-separation?

The Wikipedia article on whitespace claimed until recently that the use of whitespace as a word separator was rare until its promotion by Alcuin of York in the Carolingian Renaissance. But I've found ...
wlad's user avatar
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Does a pronoun share the subject of a noun it is referring to?

I have been reading the Cambridge Dictionary punctuation guide (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/punctuation), and a couple of things struck me as queer. Especially the "...
Yuri Kotsar's user avatar
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0 answers
114 views

Linguistic function of commas in English

To me, it seems that the information about the usage of commas in English is for the most part prescriptive. Very few sources actually explain; indeed, I have yet to see any such source. If you go ...
Eric's user avatar
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12 votes
8 answers
4k views

Do any languages use words like particles to represent commas, periods, hyphens, quotes, parentheses, etc.?

Wondering if any languages use words, particles, or other speakable markers to represent punctuation like periods, commas, hyphens, quotes, parentheses, question marks, exclamation marks, or ...
Lance's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
114 views

What causes people to make mistakes in language usage? Is it bad concentration or mislearned rules or ...?

What causes people to make mistakes in language usage? Is it bad concentration or mislearned rules or ...? This confuses me. If the rules are to be reasonable, shouldn't people "know" ...
mavavilj's user avatar
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1 answer
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Are there spaces or other marks between word in Ancient Semitic epigraphs?

Are there spaces or other marks between word in Ancient Semitic (i.e. Hebrew, Aramaic, Canaanite) epigraphs?
Reb Chaim HaQoton's user avatar
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1 answer
713 views

Why is the question mark like this in Hebrew language? [closed]

I have tried an interrogative sentence on Google Translate from English to Hebrew and that was "How old are you?" It translated as what you see in the picture. (of course Hebrew is right to ...
Snack Exchange's user avatar
4 votes
3 answers
433 views

Why do we make a distinction between letters and punctuation marks?

In English, for example, the word "don't" is made up of 4 letters ("d", "o", "n" and "t"), and one punctuation mark ("'"). However, there seems to me to be no reason for this distinction. Without any ...
Tim's user avatar
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3 votes
2 answers
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How do you break words across lines in Arabic?

I have been searching for this for a few hours today and haven't found anything but this really, well maybe this is as close as it gets. Just found this, too, which is nice. I've asked this on the ...
Lance's user avatar
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4 votes
0 answers
117 views

How and why do languages evolve to use different types of quotation marks?

For example, English uses "...", but French uses «...». Also, which of these is more common? What did the first written languages use?
joe's user avatar
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0 answers
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All the punctuation features across languages

Wondering what features of language or writing that languages across the world transcribe into so-called "punctuation". To clarify what I mean, I don't mean a list of every punctuation character in ...
Lance's user avatar
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7 votes
1 answer
1k views

Which alphabetic writing system first had spaces between words?

Just recently, I believed that spaces between words were first invented with the Carolingian minuscule, invented by the English scholar Alcuin of York. As I just discovered, spacing wasn't first ever ...
arara's user avatar
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-1 votes
2 answers
120 views

Do any languages allow merging of two sentences without punctuation?

I teach some students who are not native English speakers and commonly make this mistake in their writing: They often combine two complete sentences without any punctuation or break between them. ...
WillG's user avatar
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-1 votes
1 answer
66 views

What are all of the possible punctuation that are used within words in the majority of languages?

I know it's potentially a bit of an odd question, but I am working on an app that needs to analyze text that can be written in any of the most common languages. What I need to know is what punctuation/...
nr0's user avatar
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0 votes
1 answer
254 views

Is punctuation necessary in written language?

I'm wondering if punctuation is necessary for written languages. I can't quite tell if in spoken languages we use "punctuation". It seems like "we say multiple words without pauses, breaks, or other ...
Lance's user avatar
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3 votes
0 answers
165 views

Are there written languages that commonly start direct speech without marking?

In English and many common languages nowadays, punctuation marks are used to introduce direct speech. This makes it possible to start direct speech without lexical clue, as in the second example here: ...
Keelan's user avatar
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4 votes
2 answers
443 views

Is a full stop a morpheme?

Is a full stop, represented by the graphical character '.', a morpheme? I haven't found a source either confirming or denying this, but the examples I've seen seem to indicate that the answer is no.
extremeaxe5's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
535 views

Can a written language get away without punctuation marks?

I had a thought a few days ago while I was thinking about conlangs. If a language had a strict verb-final order, it could easily get away without using punctuation to show the end of a sentence. ...
user avatar
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1 answer
1k views

"Dash" dialog punctuation in different languages

I know that a punctuation of dialogues in literary texts in Russian and French may use dashes: — Hé, arrête avec ça, dit-il. (In French) — Эй, прекрати, — сказал он. (In Russian) But in English the ...
Exerion's user avatar
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15 votes
2 answers
632 views

Why are Chinese punctuation marks 。and 、so similar to its western style equivalents?

I've been trying to understand what are the rules for using Chinese punctuation symbols and I stumbled upon this article, which states that: For instance, a Song Dynasty print of Chronicles of ...
GA1's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
1k views

Significance of 'ฯ' in English orthography

The special characters page of my English keyboard on Android contains what appears to be a Thai character (ฯ). I've so far found that it is used as a kind of punctuation or phrase-shortening particle ...
Alex Clough's user avatar
8 votes
3 answers
544 views

Are non-spoken elements, such as capitalization and punctuation mark usage, part of the English language?

On the English Language Learners SE meta site, I'm involved in a conversation that I find somewhat bizarre. In the order in which they appear, here are the assertions (paraphrased with supporting ...
Kyle Strand's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
6k views

Are Question Marks Universal?

I'm always shocked when I see a foreign text with a simple question mark in it. Spanish has the upside down question mark to offset a question right from the outset. Are Question Marks Universal?
Mou某's user avatar
  • 409
2 votes
2 answers
2k views

What languages, if any, require spaces around punctuation marks?

I have often seen posts on various Stack Exchange sites that have spaces around punctuation marks. For example: Here , spaces around a comma. A space before a question mark ? I think I've only seen ...
terdon's user avatar
  • 335
10 votes
2 answers
4k views

Why do languages with such different alphabets use the same common punctuation marks?

From my experience, many languages with absolutely different alphabets colloquially use the same common punctuation marks, such as: the question mark (?), for inquiring/interrogatives exclamation ...
galois's user avatar
  • 233
1 vote
3 answers
739 views

Are the rules for comma placements universal?

When i write, i put a comma according to my gut feeling. therefore i left a lot of marks on my way to the end of the sentence that sum up to a bubble of insecurity. Anyway, i am not even sure it comma ...
meireikei's user avatar
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1 vote
0 answers
197 views

Punctuation and spaces in other common languages?

For example, in Chinese, a full stop is 。 (U+3002) and a space is   (U+3000). I need to break paragraphs into sentences and I want to make it compatible with as many languages as possible. What other ...
Leo Jiang's user avatar
  • 111
6 votes
4 answers
3k views

What languages use the serial comma?

There's a well-known split in English between those who use the so-called serial or Oxford comma, a comma before the last item in a list like Able, Baker, and Charlie, and those who don't. That leads ...
msh210's user avatar
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6 votes
4 answers
3k views

Are Hebrew numeric ranges written right-to-left or left-to-right?

There seems to be a difference between Hebrew and Arabic, for example. Here's a test you can do in Notepad: Switch the text direction to right-to-left (it's one of the context menu options) Paste (...
Tatiana Racheva's user avatar
2 votes
3 answers
2k views

Are apostrophes and hyphens punctuation marks?

The question is: Would you classify apostrophes and hyphens as punctuation marks? Now, Webster and a lot of other sources define them as punctuation marks. I know for sure that in Russian linguistics ...
Andrew's user avatar
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11 votes
2 answers
4k views

Are there sentence boundary disambiguation algorithms which can handle punctuation errors with decent accuracy?

Most algorithms for splitting text into sentences which I've found rely on punctuation being correct. However, in many real world applications, there will be substantial numbers of punctuation errors (...
Alexey Romanov's user avatar