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An interpunct , also known as an interpoint, middle dot, middot and centered dot or centred dot, is a punctuation mark consisting of a vertically centered dot used for
interword separation In punctuation, a word divider is a glyph that separates written words. In languages which use the Latin, Cyrillic, and Arabic alphabets, as well as other scripts of Europe and West Asia, the word divider is a blank space, or ''whitespace''. T ...
in ancient
Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...
. (Word-separating spaces did not appear until some time between 600 and 800 CE.) It appears in a variety of uses in some modern languages and is present in
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
as . The multiplication dot (Unicode ) is frequently used in mathematical and scientific notation, and it may differ in appearance from the interpunct.


In written language

Various dictionaries use the interpunct (in this context, sometimes called a hyphenation point) to indicate where to split a word and insert a hyphen if the word doesn't fit on the line. There is also a separate Unicode character, .


English

In
British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...
typography Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), and ...
, the space dot was once used as the formal
decimal point A decimal separator is a symbol used to separate the integer part from the fractional part of a number written in decimal form (e.g., "." in 12.45). Different countries officially designate different symbols for use as the separator. The choi ...
. Its use was advocated by laws and can still be found in some UK-based academic journals such as ''
The Lancet ''The Lancet'' is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal and one of the oldest of its kind. It is also the world's highest-impact academic journal. It was founded in England in 1823. The journal publishes original research articles, ...
''. When the
pound sterling Sterling (abbreviation: stg; Other spelling styles, such as STG and Stg, are also seen. ISO code: GBP) is the currency of the United Kingdom and nine of its associated territories. The pound ( sign: £) is the main unit of sterling, and t ...
was decimalised in 1971, the official advice issued was to write decimal amounts with a raised point (for example, ) and to use a decimal point "on the line" only when typesetting constraints made it unavoidable. However, this usage had already been declining since the 1968 ruling by the
Ministry of Technology The Ministry of Technology was a department of the government of the United Kingdom, sometimes abbreviated as "MinTech". The Ministry of Technology was established by the incoming government of Harold Wilson in October 1964 as part of Wilson's am ...
to use the
full stop The full stop (Commonwealth English), period (North American English), or full point , is a punctuation mark. It is used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamation ...
as the decimal point, not only because of that ruling but also because it is the widely-adopted international standard, and because the standard
UK keyboard layout QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden type ...
(for typewriters and computers) has only the
full stop The full stop (Commonwealth English), period (North American English), or full point , is a punctuation mark. It is used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamation ...
. The space dot is still used by some in handwriting. In the early modern era, full stops (periods) were sometimes written as interpuncts (for example in the handwritten
Mayflower Compact The Mayflower Compact, originally titled Agreement Between the Settlers of New Plymouth, was the first governing document of Plymouth Colony. It was written by the men aboard the ''Mayflower,'' consisting of separatist Puritans, adventurers, an ...
). In the
Shavian alphabet The Shavian alphabet (; also known as the Shaw alphabet) is an alphabet conceived as a way to provide simple, phonemic orthography for the English language to replace the difficulties of conventional spelling using the Latin alphabet. It wa ...
, interpuncts replace
capitalization Capitalization (American English) or capitalisation (British English) is writing a word with its first letter as a capital letter (uppercase letter) and the remaining letters in lower case, in writing systems with a case distinction. The term a ...
as the marker of proper nouns. The dot is placed at the beginning of a word.


Catalan

The ("flying point") is used in
Valencian Valencian () or Valencian language () is the official, historical and traditional name used in the Valencian Community (Spain), and unofficially in the Carche, El Carche comarca in Región de Murcia, Murcia (Spain), to refer to the Romance lan ...
and
Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
between two Ls in cases where each belongs to a separate syllable, for example , "cell". This distinguishes such "
geminate In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...
Ls" (), which are pronounced , from "double L" (), which are written without the flying point and are pronounced . In situations where the flying point is unavailable,
period Period may refer to: Common uses * Era, a length or span of time * Full stop (or period), a punctuation mark Arts, entertainment, and media * Period (music), a concept in musical composition * Periodic sentence (or rhetorical period), a concept ...
s (as in ) or
hyphen The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. ''Son-in-law'' is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes (figure d ...
s (as in ) are frequently used as substitutes, but this is tolerated rather than encouraged. Historically, medieval
Valencian Valencian () or Valencian language () is the official, historical and traditional name used in the Valencian Community (Spain), and unofficially in the Carche, El Carche comarca in Región de Murcia, Murcia (Spain), to refer to the Romance lan ...
/
Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
also used the symbol as a marker for certain
elision In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run toget ...
s, much like the modern apostrophe (see
Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language Occitan (; o ...
below) and hyphenations. There is no separate
keyboard layout A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard. is the actua ...
for Catalan: the flying point can be typed using in the Spanish (Spain) layout. It appears in
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
as the pre-composed letters (U+013F) and (U+0140), but they are compatibility characters and are not frequently used or recommended.


Chinese

The interpunct is used in
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
(which generally lacks spacing between
characters Character or Characters may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk * ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
) to mark divisions in
transliterated Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus '' trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or ...
foreign words, particularly names. This is properly (and in
Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
formally) a full-width partition sign (Unicode code point U+2027, Hyphenation Point), although sometimes narrower forms are substituted for aesthetic reasons. In particular, the regular interpunct is more commonly used as a computer input, although Chinese-language fonts typically render this as full width. When the Chinese text is
romanized Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...
, the partition sign is simply replaced by a standard space or other appropriate punctuation. Thus,
William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
is signified as or ( p ''Wēilián Shāshìbǐyà''),
George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
as or ( p ''Qiáozhì W. Bùshí'') and the full name of the prophet
Muhammad Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد;  570 – 8 June 632 Common Era, CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Muhammad in Islam, Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet Divine inspiration, di ...
as ( p ''Ābù Kǎxīmù Mùhǎnmòdé Běn Ābùdùlā Běn Ābùdùlè-Mùtǎlìbǔ Běn Hāxīmǔ''). Titles and other translated words are not similarly marked:
Genghis Khan ''Chinggis Khaan'' ͡ʃʰiŋɡɪs xaːŋbr />Mongol script: ''Chinggis Qa(gh)an/ Chinggis Khagan'' , birth_name = Temüjin , successor = Tolui (as regent)Ögedei Khan , spouse = , issue = , house = Borjigin , ...
and
Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during ...
are simply and or without a partition sign. The partition sign is also used to separate book and chapter titles when they are mentioned consecutively: book first and then chapter.


Hokkien

In
Pe̍h-ōe-jī (; ; ), also sometimes known as the Church Romanization, is an orthography used to write variants of Southern Min Chinese, particularly Taiwanese and Amoy Hokkien. Developed by Western missionaries working among the Chinese diaspora in South ...
for
Taiwanese Hokkien Taiwanese Hokkien () (; Tâi-lô: ''Tâi-uân-uē''), also known as Taigi/Taigu (; Pe̍h-ōe-jī/Tâi-lô: ''Tâi-gí / Tâi-gú''), Taiwanese, Taiwanese Minnan, Hoklo and Holo, is a variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively by about 70% ...
, middle dot is often used as a workaround for ''dot above right''
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
because most early encoding systems did not support this diacritic. This is now encoded as . Unicode did not support this diacritic until June 2004. Newer fonts often support it natively; however, the practice of using middle dot still exists. Historically, it was derived in the late 19th century from an older barred-o with curly tail as an adaptation to the typewriter.


Tibetan

In
Tibetan Tibetan may mean: * of, from, or related to Tibet * Tibetan people, an ethnic group * Tibetan language: ** Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard ** Standard Tibetan, the most widely used spoken dial ...
the interpunct ⟨་⟩, called (), is used as a
morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology. In English, morphemes are ...
delimiter.


Ethiopic

The
Geʽez Geez (; ' , and sometimes referred to in scholarly literature as Classical Ethiopic) is an ancient Ethiopian Semitic language. The language originates from what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. Today, Geez is used as the main liturgi ...
(Ethiopic) script traditionally separates words with an interpunct of two vertically aligned dots, like a colon, but with larger dots: (For example Starting in the late 19th century the use of such punctuation has largely fallen out of use in favor of whitespace, except in formal hand-written or liturgical texts. In Eritrea the character may be used as a comma.


Franco-Provençal

In
Franco-Provençal Franco-Provençal (also Francoprovençal, Patois or Arpitan) is a language within Gallo-Romance originally spoken in east-central France, western Switzerland and northwestern Italy. Franco-Provençal has several distinct dialects and is separ ...
(or Arpitan), the interpunct is used in order to distinguish the following graphemes: * ch·, pronounced , versus ch, pronounced * j·, pronounced , versus j, pronounced * g· before ''e, i,'' pronounced , versus g before ''e, i,'' pronounced


French

In modern French, the interpunct is sometimes used for
gender-neutral Gender neutrality (adjective form: gender-neutral), also known as gender-neutralism or the gender neutrality movement, is the idea that policies, language, and other social institutions (social structures or gender roles) should avoid distinguish ...
writing, as in « les salarié·e·s » for « les salariés et les salariées ».


Greek

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
did not have spacing or interpuncts but instead ran all the letters together. By
Late Antiquity Late antiquity is the time of transition from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages, generally spanning the 3rd–7th century in Europe and adjacent areas bordering the Mediterranean Basin. The popularization of this periodization in English ha ...
, various marks were used to separate words, particularly the
Greek comma The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline ...
. The
modern Greek Modern Greek (, , or , ''Kiní Neoellinikí Glóssa''), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the ...
ano teleia mark (, , "upper stop"), also known as (), is the infrequently-encountered Greek
semicolon The semicolon or semi-colon is a symbol commonly used as orthographic punctuation. In the English language, a semicolon is most commonly used to link (in a single sentence) two independent clauses that are closely related in thought. When a ...
and is properly
romanized Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...
as such. 'Ellīnikós_Organismós_Typopoíīsīs'',_"Hellenic_Organization_for_Standardization".html" ;"title="Hellenic Organization for Standardization">'Ellīnikós Organismós Typopoíīsīs'', "Hellenic Organization for Standardization"">Hellenic Organization for Standardization">'Ellīnikós Organismós Typopoíīsīs'', "Hellenic Organization for Standardization" [''ELOT 743, 2ī Ekdosī'', "ELOT 743, "]. ELOT (Athens), 2001. . It is also used to introduce lists in the manner of an English colon. In Greek text,
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
provides a unique code point——but it is also expressed as an interpunct. In practice, the separate code point for ano teleia canonically decomposes to the interpunct. The Hellenistic scholars of
Alexandria Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandria ...
first developed the mark for a function closer to the
comma The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline ...
, before it fell out of use and was then repurposed for its present role.


Japanese

Interpuncts are often used to separate transcribed foreign names or words written in
katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...
. For example, "
Can't Buy Me Love "Can't Buy Me Love" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles that was released in March 1964 as the A-side of their sixth single. It was written by Paul McCartney and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. The song was included o ...
" becomes (). A middle dot is also sometimes used to separate lists in
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
instead of the Japanese comma ("" known as ). Dictionaries and
grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...
lessons in Japanese sometimes also use a similar symbol to separate a
verb A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
from its root. Note that while some fonts may render the Japanese middle dot as a square under great magnification, this is not a defining property of the middle dot that is used in China or Japan. However, the Japanese writing system usually does not use space or punctuation to separate words (though the mixing of
katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...
,
kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...
and
hiragana is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrast ...
gives some indication of word boundary). In Japanese
typography Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), and ...
, there exist two Unicode code points: * , with a fixed width that is the same as most kana characters, known as ''fullwidth''. * The interpunct also has a number of other uses in Japanese, including the following: to separate titles, names and positions: (Assistant Section Head · Suzuki); as a decimal point when writing numbers in kanji: ; as a slash when writing for "or" in abbreviations: ; and in place of hyphens, dashes and colons when writing vertically.


Korean

Interpuncts are used in written Korean to denote a list of two or more words, similarly to how a slash (/) is used to juxtapose words in many other languages. In this role it also functions in a similar way to the
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
en dash The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...
, as in , "American–Soviet relations". The use of interpuncts has declined in years of digital typography and especially in place of slashes, but, in the strictest sense, a slash cannot replace a middle dot in Korean typography. () is used more than a middle dot when an interpunct is to be used in Korean typography, though ''araea'' is technically not a punctuation symbol but actually an obsolete Hangul '' jamo''. Because ''araea'' is a
full-width In CJK (Chinese, Japanese and Korean) computing, graphic characters are traditionally classed into fullwidth (in Taiwan and Hong Kong: 全形; in CJK: 全角) and halfwidth (in Taiwan and Hong Kong: 半形; in CJK: 半角) characters. Unlik ...
letter, it looks better than middle dot between Hangul. In addition, it is drawn like the middle dot in Windows default Korean fonts such as '' Batang''.


Latin

The interpunct () was regularly used in
classical Latin Classical Latin is the form of Literary Latin recognized as a literary standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It was used from 75 BC to the 3rd century AD, when it developed into Late Latin. In some later periods ...
to separate words. In addition to the most common round form,
inscription Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...
s sometimes use a small
equilateral triangle In geometry, an equilateral triangle is a triangle in which all three sides have the same length. In the familiar Euclidean geometry, an equilateral triangle is also equiangular; that is, all three internal angles are also congruent to each othe ...
for the interpunct, pointing either up or down. It may also appear as a mid-line comma, similar to the
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
practice of the time. The interpunct fell out of use , and
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
was then written for several centuries.


Occitan

In
Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language Occitan (; o ...
, especially in the Gascon dialect, the interpunct (''punt interior'', literally, "inner dot", or ''ponch naut'' for "high / upper point") is used to distinguish the following graphemes: * s·h, pronounced , versus sh, pronounced , for example, in ''des·har'' 'to undo' vs ''deishar'' 'to leave' * n·h, pronounced , versus nh, pronounced , for example in ''in·hèrn'' 'hell' vs ''vinha'' 'vineyard' Although it is considered to be a spelling error, a
period Period may refer to: Common uses * Era, a length or span of time * Full stop (or period), a punctuation mark Arts, entertainment, and media * Period (music), a concept in musical composition * Periodic sentence (or rhetorical period), a concept ...
is frequently used when a middle dot is unavailable: ''des.har, in.hèrn'', which is the case for French
keyboard layout A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard. is the actua ...
. In
Old Occitan Old Occitan ( oc, occitan ancian, label=Occitan language, Modern Occitan, ca, occità antic), also called Old Provençal, was the earliest form of the Occitano-Romance languages, as attested in writings dating from the eighth through the fourteen ...
, the symbol · was sometimes used to denote certain
elision In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run toget ...
s, much like the modern apostrophe, the only difference being that the word that gets to be elided is always placed after the interpunct, the word before ending either in a vowel sound or the letter ''n'': * que·l (''que lo'', that the) versus qu'el (that he) * From
Bertran de Born Bertran de Born (; 1140s – by 1215) was a baron from the Limousin in France, and one of the major Occitan troubadours of the 12th-13th century. He composed love songs (cansos) but was better known for his political songs (sirventes). He wa ...
's ''Ab joi mou lo vers e·l comens'' (translated by James H. Donalson): ''Bela Domna·l vostre cors gens''
''E·lh vostre bel olh m'an conquis,''
''E·l doutz esgartz e lo clars vis,''
''E·l vostre bels essenhamens,''
''Que, can be m'en pren esmansa,''
''De beutat no·us trob egansa:''
''La genser etz c'om posc'e·l mon chauzir,''
''O no·i vei clar dels olhs ab que·us remir.'' ''Domna·l'' = ''Domna, lo'' ("Lady, the": singular
definite article An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English, both "the" and "a(n)" ar ...
)
''E·lh'' = ''E li'' ("And the": plural definite article)
''E·l'' = ''E lo'' ("And the")
''E·l'' = ''E lo'' ("And the")

''No·us'' = ''Non vos'' ("(do) not... you":
direct object In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...
pronoun)
''E·l'' = ''En lo'' ("in the")
''No·i'' = ''Non i'' ("(do) not... there") // ''Que·us'' = ''Que vos'' ("that (I)... you") O pretty lady, all your grace
and eyes of beauty conquered me,
sweet glance and brightness of your face
and all your nature has to tell
so if I make an appraisal
I find no one like in beauty:
most pleasing to be found in all the world
or else the eyes I see you with have dimmed.


Old Irish

In many linguistic works discussing
Old Irish Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic ( sga, Goídelc, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; ga, Sean-Ghaeilge; gd, Seann-Ghàidhlig; gv, Shenn Yernish or ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive writt ...
(but not in actual Old Irish manuscripts), the interpunct is used to separate a pretonic preverbal element from the stressed syllable of the verb, e.g. "gives". It is also used in citing the verb forms used after such preverbal elements (the prototonic forms), e.g. "carries", to distinguish them from forms used without preverbs, e.g. "carries". In other works, the
hyphen The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. ''Son-in-law'' is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes (figure d ...
( (do-
prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the Word stem, stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy'' ...
), ) or colon (, ) may be used for this purpose.


Runes

Runic Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...
texts use either an interpunct-like or a colon-like punctuation mark to separate words. There are two
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
characters dedicated for this: and .


In mathematics and science

Up to the middle of the 20th century, and sporadically even much later, the interpunct could be found used as the decimal marker in British publications, such as tables of constants (e.g., ""). This made expressions such as potentially ambiguous: does this denote , or ? In situations where the interpunct is used as a decimal point, the multiplication sign used is usually a full stop (period), not an interpunct. In publications conforming to the standards of the
International System of Units The International System of Units, known by the international abbreviation SI in all languages and sometimes pleonastically as the SI system, is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement. E ...
, as well as the multiplication sign (×), the centered dot (dot operator) or space (often typographically a non-breaking space) can be used as a multiplication sign. Only a
comma The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline ...
or full stop (period) may be used as a decimal marker. The centered dot can be used when multiplying units, as in for the
newton Newton most commonly refers to: * Isaac Newton (1642–1726/1727), English scientist * Newton (unit), SI unit of force named after Isaac Newton Newton may also refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Newton'' (film), a 2017 Indian film * Newton ( ...
expressed in terms of SI base units. However, when the decimal point is used as the decimal marker, as in the United States, the use of a centered dot for the multiplication of numbers or values of quantities is discouraged. In
mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
, a small middle dot can be used to represent
product Product may refer to: Business * Product (business), an item that serves as a solution to a specific consumer problem. * Product (project management), a deliverable or set of deliverables that contribute to a business solution Mathematics * Produ ...
; for example, for the product of ''x'' and ''y''. When dealing with scalars, it is interchangeable with the
multiplication sign The multiplication sign, also known as the times sign or the dimension sign, is the symbol , used in mathematics to denote the multiplication operation and its resulting product. While similar to a lowercase X (), the form is properly a four- ...
, such that means the same thing as . However, when dealing with vectors, the
dot product In mathematics, the dot product or scalar productThe term ''scalar product'' means literally "product with a scalar as a result". It is also used sometimes for other symmetric bilinear forms, for example in a pseudo-Euclidean space. is an algebra ...
is distinct from the
cross product In mathematics, the cross product or vector product (occasionally directed area product, to emphasize its geometric significance) is a binary operation on two vectors in a three-dimensional oriented Euclidean vector space (named here E), and is ...
. For the scalar product of vectors, only the dot operator is used. Another usage of this symbol in mathematics is with functions, where the dot is used as a placeholder for a
function argument In computer programming, a parameter or a formal argument is a special kind of variable used in a subroutine to refer to one of the pieces of data provided as input to the subroutine. These pieces of data are the values of the arguments (often ca ...
, in order to distinguish between the function itself and the value of a function evaluated at a specific point. For example, denotes the function , and denotes a
partial application In computer science, partial application (or partial function application) refers to the process of fixing a number of arguments to a function, producing another function of smaller arity. Given a function f \colon (X \times Y \times Z) \to N , ...
, where the first two arguments are fixed and the third varies. The bullet operator, , U+2219, is sometimes used to denote the "AND" relationship in formal
logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises ...
. In
computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, e ...
, the middle dot is usually displayed (but not printed) to indicate white space in various software applications such as
word processing A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consen ...
,
graphic design Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art whose activity consists in projecting visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdiscipli ...
, web layout,
desktop publishing Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online c ...
or
software development Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development invol ...
programs. In some
word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Word processor (electronic device), Early word processors were stand-alone devices ded ...
s, interpuncts are used to denote not only hard space or space characters, but also sometimes used to indicate a space when put in paragraph format to show indentations and spaces. This allows the user to see where white space is located in the document and what sizes of white space are used, since normally white space is invisible so tabs, spaces, non-breaking spaces and such are indistinguishable from one another. In
chemistry Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...
, the middle dot is used to separate the parts of formulas of
addition compound An adduct (from the Latin ''adductus'', "drawn toward" alternatively, a contraction of "addition product") is a product of a direct addition of two or more distinct molecules, resulting in a single reaction product containing all atoms of all co ...
s, mixture salts or solvates (mostly hydrates), such as of copper(II) sulphate pentahydrate, .


The middot as a letter

A middot may be used as a
consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
or
modifier letter A modifier letter, in the Unicode Standard, is a letter or symbol typically written next to another letter that it modifies in some way. They generally function like diacritics A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical ...
, rather than as punctuation, in transcription systems and in language orthographies. For such uses Unicode provides the code point . In the Sinological tradition of the
36 initials A rime table or rhyme table () is a Chinese phonological model, tabulating the syllables of the series of rime dictionaries beginning with the '' Qieyun'' (601) by their onsets, rhyme groups, tones and other properties. The method gave a signif ...
, the onset 影 (typically reconstructed as a
glottal stop The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
) may be transliterated with a middot , and the onset 喩 (typically reconstructed as a null onset) with an
apostrophe The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one o ...
. Conventions vary, however, and it is common for 影 to be transliterated with the apostrophe. These conventions are used both for Chinese itself and for other scripts of China, such as ʼPhags-pa and Jurchen. In
Americanist phonetic notation Americanist phonetic notation, also known as the North American Phonetic Alphabet (NAPA), the Americanist Phonetic Alphabet or the American Phonetic Alphabet (APA), is a system of phonetic notation originally developed by European and American an ...
, the middot is a more common variant of the colon used to indicate
vowel length In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, f ...
. It may be called a ''half-colon'' in such usage. Graphically, it may be high in the letter space (the top dot of the colon) or centered as the interpunct. From Americanist notation, it has been adopted into the orthographies of several languages, such as Washo. In the writings of
Franz Boas Franz Uri Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the movements known as historical ...
, the middot was used for palatal or palatalized consonants, e.g. for IPA In the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, a middle dot ⟨ᐧ⟩ indicates a syllable medial ⟨w⟩ in
Cree The Cree ( cr, néhinaw, script=Latn, , etc.; french: link=no, Cri) are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people. They live primarily in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada ...
and
Ojibwe The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains. According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
, ⟨y⟩ or ⟨yu⟩ in some of the
Athapascan languages Athabaskan (also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large family of indigenous languages of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, Pacific C ...
, and a syllable medial ⟨s⟩ in
Blackfoot The Blackfoot Confederacy, ''Niitsitapi'' or ''Siksikaitsitapi'' (ᖹᐟᒧᐧᒣᑯ, meaning "the people" or " Blackfoot-speaking real people"), is a historic collective name for linguistically related groups that make up the Blackfoot or Bla ...
. However, depending on the writing tradition, the middle dot may appear after the syllable it modifies (which is found in the Western style) or before the syllable it modifies (which is found in the Northern and Eastern styles). In Unicode, the middle dot is encoded both as independent glyph or as part of a pre-composed letter, such as in . In the
Carrier syllabics Carrier or Déné syllabics (, Dʌlk'ʷahke, (Dulkw'ahke) meaning ''toad feet'') is a script created by Adrien-Gabriel Morice for the Carrier language. It was inspired by Cree syllabics and is one of the writing systems in the Canadian Aboriginal ...
subset, the middle dot Final indicates a
glottal stop The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
, but a centered dot diacritic on -position letters transform the vowel value to , for example: , .


Keyboard input

On computers, the interpunct may be available through various key combinations, depending on the
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...
and the
keyboard layout A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard. is the actua ...
. Assuming a
QWERTY QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six Computer keyboard keys#Types, keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created f ...
keyboard layout unless otherwise stated: * on Apple
macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
, an interpunct can be entered by pressing (or on the Norwegian and Swedish keyboard layouts, on the Danish keyboard layout, on the French keyboard layout and on the French Canadian keyboard layout ); * on
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
computers with the
X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wit ...
and on
ChromeOS ChromeOS, sometimes stylized as chromeOS and formerly styled as Chrome OS, is a Linux-based operating system designed by Google. It is derived from the open-source ChromiumOS and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user interfac ...
it can be inserted by pressing ; it can also be inserted via the
Compose key A compose key (sometimes called multi key) is a key on a computer keyboard that indicates that the following (usually 2 or more) keystrokes trigger the insertion of an alternate character, typically a precomposed character or a symbol. For insta ...
sequence . Alternatively, using the generic
Unicode input Unicode input is the insertion of a specific Universal Character Set characters, Unicode character on a computer by a user (computing), user; it is a common way to input characters not directly supported by a physical Keyboard (computing), keybo ...
method, it may be obtained by pressing and then typing (B7 Is the
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
hexadecimal In mathematics and computing, the hexadecimal (also base-16 or simply hex) numeral system is a positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of 16. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using 10 symbols, hexa ...
codepoint for the interpunct); * on
Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
with codepage 1252, it can be inserted by pressing or (on the
numeric keypad A numeric keypad, number pad, numpad, or ten key, is the palm-sized, usually-17-key section of a standard computer keyboard, usually on the far right. It provides calculator-style efficiency for entering numbers. The idea of a 10-key nu ...
). The default shortcut using AZERTY Greek polytonic keyboard layout (EL) is .


Similar symbols

''Characters in the Symbol column above may not render correctly in all browsers.''


See also

*
Punctuation Punctuation (or sometimes interpunction) is the use of spacing, conventional signs (called punctuation marks), and certain typographical devices as aids to the understanding and correct reading of written text, whether read silently or aloud. An ...
*
Syllabification Syllabification () or syllabication (), also known as hyphenation, is the separation of a word into syllables, whether spoken, written or signed. Overview The written separation into syllables is usually marked by a hyphen when using English or ...
* Dot (disambiguation)


Notes


References


External links

* {{navbox punctuation Punctuation Latin-script diacritics Ancient Greek punctuation eu:Erdiko puntu