Chinese Punctuation - Other Punctuation Marks - Punctuations

Punctuations

Full stop ( 。 )

The Chinese full stop is a fullwidth small circle (traditional Chinese: 句號; simplified Chinese: 句号; pinyin: jùhào). In horizontal writing, the full stop is placed in the middle (bottom left in China); in vertical writing, it is placed below and to the right of the last character in China, and in the middle in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

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 (﹁﹂).
• 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.

Enumeration comma ( 、 )

The enumeration comma, known as the "pause mark" in Chinese (traditional Chinese: 頓號; simplified Chinese: 顿号; 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 (the 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 及 C".

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" (a Mandarin translation) and traditional Chinese: "李奧納多‧達‧文西" (a Cantonese translation). In Chinese, the middle dot is also fullwidth in printed matter, while the halfwidth middle dot (·) is also used in computer input, which is then rendered as fullwidth in Chinese-language fonts.

Title marks ( 《... 》, ﹏﹏﹏ )

For titles of books, films, and so on, Chinese uses fullwidth double angle brackets 《...》, 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. ﹏﹏﹏ (wavy underline) is also used as title marks.

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

Similarly to the space between each letter in European languages, Chinese writing uses a narrow space between characters, though it does not observe the equivalent to the wider space between words, except in rare occasions. (In this respect, it may somewhat resemble a form of scriptio continua.)

When space is used, it is also fullwidth. One instance of its usage is as an honorific marker. A modern example in Taiwan, is found in the reference to Chiang Kai-shek as 先總統　蔣公 (Former President, Lord Chiang), in which the preceding space serves as an honorific marker for 蔣公. This use is also still current in very formal letters or other old-style documents.

When Chinese is written in transliterated form (as in Hanyu Pinyin), spaces are used to assist in reading.