| · | |
|---|---|
Interpunct | |
| In Unicode | U+00B7 ·MIDDLE DOT (·, ·, ·) |
| Different from | |
| Different from | U+2027 ‧HYPHENATION POINT U+2219 ∙BULLET OPERATOR |
| Related | |
| See also | U+02D1 ˑMODIFIER LETTER HALF TRIANGULAR COLON |
Aninterpunct·, also known as aninterpoint,[1]middle dot,middot, orcentered dot, is a punctuation mark consisting of a vertically centered dot used forinterword separation inClassical Latin. (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.
Themultiplication dot or "dot operator" is frequently used in mathematical and scientific notation, and it may differ in appearance from the interpunct.
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 does not fit on the line. There is also a separate Unicode character,U+2027 ‧HYPHENATION POINT.
In the early modern era, full stops (periods) were sometimes written as interpuncts (for example in the depicted 1646 transcription of theMayflower Compact).
InBritishtypography, thespace dot was once used as the formaldecimal point. Its use was advocated by laws and can still be found in some UK-based academic journals such asThe Lancet.[2] In the 1960s, this usage was advocated by theSchool Mathematics Project, and continues to be used, albeit inconsistently, inprimary-school mathematics education.[3][4] When thepound sterling wasdecimalised in 1971, the official advice issued was to write decimal amounts with a raised point (for example,£21·48) and to use a decimal point "on the line" only when typesetting constraints made it unavoidable.[5] However, this usage had already been declining since the 1968 ruling by theMinistry of Technology to use thefull stop as the decimal point,[6] not only because of that ruling but also because the standardUK keyboard layout (for typewriters and computers) has only the full stop.
In the artificially constructedShavian alphabet, interpuncts are used instead ofcapitalization as the marker of proper nouns. The dot is placed at the beginning of a word.
The interpunct (interpunctus) was regularly used inclassical Latin to separate words. In addition to the most common round form,inscriptions sometimes use a smallequilateral triangle for the interpunct, pointing either up or down. It may also appear as a mid-line comma, similar to theGreek practice of the time. The interpunct fell out of usec. 200 CE, andLatin was then writtenscripta continua for several centuries.[citation needed]
InFranco-Provençal (or Arpitan), the interpunct is used in order to distinguish the following graphemes:
In modernFrench, the interpunct is sometimes used forgender-neutral writing, as inles salarié·e·s forles salariés et les salariées ("the male employees and the female employees").[7]
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Thepunt volat ("flying point") is used inCatalan between twoLs in cases where each belongs to a separate syllable, for examplecel·la, "cell". This distinguishes such "geminate Ls" (ela geminada), which are pronounced[ɫː], from "double L" (doble ela), which are written without the flying point and are pronounced[ʎ]. In situations where the flying point is unavailable,periods (as incol.lecció) orhyphens (as incol-lecció) are frequently used as substitutes, but this is tolerated rather than encouraged.
Historically, medieval Catalan also used the symbol· as a marker for certainelisions, much like the modern apostrophe (seeOccitan below) andhyphenations.
There is no separate physicalkeyboard layout for Catalan: the flying point can be typed using⇧ Shift+3 in theSpanish (Spain) layout or withOption+⇧ Shift+9 on a US English layout. On a mobile phone with a Catalan keyboard layout, the geminate L with a flying dot appears when holding down theL key. It appears inUnicode as thepre-composed lettersĿ (U+013F) andŀ (U+0140), but they arecompatibility characters and are not frequently used or recommended.[8][a]
InOccitan andGascon, the interpunct (punt interior, literally, "inner dot", orponch naut for "high / upper point") is used to distinguish the following graphemes:
Although it is considered to be a spelling error, aperiod is frequently used when a middle dot is unavailable:des.har, in.hèrn, which is the case for Frenchkeyboard layout.
In modern editions ofOld Occitan texts, the apostrophe and interpunct are used to denote certainelisions that were not originally marked. The apostrophe is used withproclitic forms and the interpunct is used withenclitic forms:
Bela Domna·l vostre cors gens | Domna·l[ˈdonnal] =Domna, lo ("Lady, the": singulardefinite article) | O pretty lady, all your grace |
Ancient Greek lacked spacing or interpuncts but instead ran all the letters together. ByLate Antiquity, various marks were used to separate words, particularly theGreek comma.[9]
Inmodern Greek, theano teleia mark (Greek:άνω τελεία,romanized: ánō teleía,lit. 'upper stop'; also known asάνω στιγμή,áno stigmí) is the infrequently-encountered Greek semicolon and is properlyromanized as such.[10] In Greek text,Unicode provides the code pointU+0387 ·GREEK ANO TELEIA;[11] however, it iscanonically equivalent to the interpunct.[9]
The Hellenistic scholars ofAlexandria first developed the mark for a function closer to thecomma, before it fell out of use and was then repurposed for its present role.[9]
In many linguistic works discussingOld Irish (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.do·beir "gives". It is also used in citing the verb forms used after such preverbal elements (theprototonic forms), e.g.·beir "carries", to distinguish them from forms used without preverbs, e.g.beirid "carries".[12] In other works, thehyphen (do-beir,-beir) orcolon (do:beir,:beir) may be used for this purpose.
TheGeʽez (Ethiopic) script traditionallyseparates words with an interpunct of two vertically aligned dots, like acolon, but with larger dots:U+1361 ፡ETHIOPIC WORDSPACE. (For exampleገድለ፡ወለተ፡ጴጥሮስ). 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.[13]
InTibetan the interpunct, calledtsek (ཙེག་), is used as amorpheme delimiter.
The interpunct or "partition sign" is used inChinese (which generally lacks spacing betweencharacters) to mark divisions in wordstransliterated fromphonogram languages, particularly names. Some fonts and software renderU+00B7 ·MIDDLE DOT as double-width if it is between double-width characters, Chinese standards recommend half-width between Arabic numerals.[14] In Taiwan, the formal standard, as defined by CNS 11643, historically specifiedU+2027 ‧HYPHENATION POINT,[15] whileU+30FB ・KATAKANA MIDDLE DOT should be primarily used in Japanese contexts for separatingKatakana words. When the Chinese text isromanized, the partition sign is simply replaced by a standard space or other appropriate punctuation. Thus,William Shakespeare is written as威廉·莎士比亞 (Wēilián Shāshìbǐyà) andGeorge W. Bush as乔治·W. 布什 (喬治·W. 布殊;Qiáozhì W. Bùshí).[16][17] Titles and other translated words are not similarly marked:Genghis Khan andElizabeth II are simply成吉思汗 (Chéngjísī hán) and伊丽莎白二世 (伊麗莎白二世;Yīlìshābái èrshì).
The partition sign is also used to separate book and chapter titles when they are mentioned consecutively: book first and then chapter.
InPe̍h-ōe-jī forTaiwanese Hokkien, middle dot is often used as a workaround for thedot above rightdiacritic, since most early encoding systems did not support this diacritic. This is now encoded asU+0358 ◌͘COMBINING DOT ABOVE RIGHT (seeo͘). Unicode did not support this diacritic until June 2005. 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.
Interpuncts are often used to separate transcribed foreign names or words written inkatakana. For example, "Beautiful Sunday" becomesビューティフル・サンデー (Byūtifuru·Sandē). A middle dot is also sometimes used to separate lists inJapanese instead of theJapanese comma. Dictionaries andgrammar lessons in Japanese sometimes also use a similar symbol to separate averbsuffix from its root. 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,kanji andhiragana gives some indication of word boundary).
In Japanesetypography, there exist two Unicode code points:
The interpunct also has a number of other uses in Japanese, including the following: to separate titles, names and positions:課長補佐・鈴木 (Assistant Section Head · Suzuki); as a decimal point when writing numbers in kanji:三・一四一五九二 (3.141 592); as a slash when writing for "or" in abbreviations:月・水・金曜日 (Mon/Wed/Friday); in place of hyphens, dashes and colons when writing vertically; and in song lyrics to add a brief pause between syllables.
Interpuncts are used in written Korean to denote a list of two or more words, similarly to how aslash (/) is used to juxtapose words in many other languages. In this role it also functions in a similar way to the Englishen dash, as in미·소관계, "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.
U+318D ㆍHANGUL LETTER ARAEA (아래아) is used more than a middle dot when an interpunct is to be used in Korean typography, thougharaea is technically not a punctuation symbol but actually anobsolete Hanguljamo. Becausearaea is afull-width letter, it looks better than middle dot between Hangul. In addition, it is drawn like the middle dot in Windows default Korean fonts such asBatang.
Runic texts use either an interpunct-like or a colon-like punctuation mark to separate words. There are twoUnicode characters dedicated for this:
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| ⋅ | |
|---|---|
Multiplication dot | |
| In Unicode | U+22C5 ⋅DOT OPERATOR (⋅) |
| Related | |
| See also | U+2219 ∙BULLET OPERATOR |
Up to the mid twentieth century, and sporadically even much later,[4] the interpunct could be found used as thedecimal point in British publications, such as tables of constants (e.g., "π = 3·14159").[3]
In publications conforming to the standards of theInternational System of Units, as well as the multiplication sign (×), the centered dot (dot operator) can be used as a multiplication sign.[citation needed] Only acomma orfull stop (period) may be used as a decimal marker.[citation needed] The centered dot can be used when multiplying units, as inm·kg·s−2 for thenewton expressed in terms of SI base units.[citation needed] In the United States, the use of a centered dot for the multiplication of numbers or values of quantities is discouraged byNIST.[18]
Inmathematics, a small middle dot can be used to representmultiplication; for example, for multiplying by. When dealing withscalars, it is interchangeable with themultiplication sign (×), as long as the multiplication sign is between numerals such that it would not be mistaken as variable. For instance, means the same thing as. However, when dealing withvectors, the dot operator denotes adot product (e.g., a scalar), which is distinct from thecross product (e.g., a vector).
The symbol is sometimes used to denote the"AND" relationship in formallogic andBoolean algebra, which can be seen as a special case of multiplication.
Another usage of this symbol in mathematics is withfunctions, where the dot is used as a placeholder for afunction argument, in order to distinguish between the (general form of the) function itself and the value or a specific form of a function evaluated at a given point or with given specifications.[19][20] For example, denotes the function, and denotes apartial application, where the first two arguments are given and the third argument shall take any valid value on its domain.
Incomputing, the middle dot is usually displayed (but not printed) to indicatewhite space in various software applications such asword processing,graphic design, web layout,desktop publishing orsoftware development programs. In someword processors, interpuncts are used to denote not onlyhard 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.
Inchemistry, the middle dot is used to separate the parts of formulas ofaddition compounds, mixture salts or solvates (typically hydrates), such as ofcopper(II) sulphate pentahydrate,CuSO4·5H2O. The middle dot should not be surrounded by spaces when indicating a chemical adduct.[21]
A middot may be used as aconsonant ormodifier letter, rather than as punctuation, in transcription systems and in language orthographies. For such uses Unicode provides the code pointU+A78F ꞏLATIN LETTER SINOLOGICAL DOT.[22]
InAmericanist phonetic notation, the middot is a more common variant of thecolon⟨꞉⟩ used to indicatevowel length. It may be called ahalf-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 asWasho.
In the writings ofFranz Boas, the middot was used for palatal orpalatalized consonants, e.g.⟨kꞏ⟩ for IPA [c].
In the Sinological tradition of the36 initials, the onset 影 (typically reconstructed as aglottal stop) may be transliterated with a middot⟨ꞏ⟩, and the onset 喻 (typically reconstructed as anull onset) with anapostrophe⟨ʼ⟩. 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 asʼPhags-pa[23] andJurchen.
In theCanadian Aboriginal syllabics, a middle dot ⟨ᐧ⟩ indicates a syllable medial ⟨w⟩ inCree andOjibwe, ⟨y⟩ or ⟨yu⟩ in some of theAthapascan languages, and a syllable medial ⟨s⟩ inBlackfoot. 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 glyphU+1427 ᐧCANADIAN SYLLABICS FINAL MIDDLE DOT or as part of a pre-composed letter, such as inU+143C ᐼCANADIAN SYLLABICS PWI. In theCarrier syllabics subset, the middle dot Final indicates a glottal stop, but a centered dot diacritic on[ə]-position letters transform the vowel value to[i], for example:U+1650 ᙐCANADIAN SYLLABICS CARRIER SE,U+1652 ᙒCANADIAN SYLLABICS CARRIER SI.
| Symbol | Character Entity | Numeric Entity | Unicode Code Point | LaTeX[24] | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| · | · · · | · | U+00B7MIDDLE DOT | \textperiodcentered | The interpunct |
| ˑ | ˑ | U+02D1MODIFIER LETTER HALF TRIANGULAR COLON | IPA interpunct symbol: the triangular middot. | ||
| · | · | U+0387GREEK ANO TELEIA | Greekánō stigmē | ||
| ּ | ּ | U+05BCHEBREW POINT DAGESH OR MAPPIQ | Hebrew pointdagesh ormapiq | ||
| ᛫ | ᛫ | U+16EBRUNIC SINGLE PUNCTUATION | Runic punctuation | ||
| • | • | • | U+2022BULLET | \textbullet | bullet, often used to mark list items |
| ‧ | ‧ | U+2027HYPHENATION POINT | hyphenation point (dictionaries) | ||
| ∘ | ∘ | ∘ | U+2218RING OPERATOR | \circ | ring operator (mathematics) |
| ∙ | ∙ | U+2219BULLET OPERATOR | \bullet | bullet operator (mathematics) | |
| ⋅ | ⋅ | ⋅ | U+22C5DOT OPERATOR | \cdot,\cdotp | dot operator (mathematics) |
| ⏺ | ⏺ | U+23FABLACK CIRCLE FOR RECORD | black circle forrecord | ||
| ● | ● | U+25CFBLACK CIRCLE | |||
| ◦ | ◦ | U+25E6WHITE BULLET | hollow bullet | ||
| ⚫ | ⚫ | U+26ABMEDIUM CIRCLE BLACK | medium black circle | ||
| ⦁ | ⦁ | U+2981Z NOTATION SPOT | symbol used by theZ notation[25] | ||
| ⸰ | ⸰ | U+2E30RING POINT | Avestan punctuation mark | ||
| ⸱ | ⸱ | U+2E31WORD SEPARATOR MIDDLE DOT | word separator (Avestan and other scripts) | ||
| ⸳ | ⸳ | U+2E33RAISED DOT | vertical position betweenfull stop and middle dot | ||
| ・ | ・ | U+30FBKATAKANA MIDDLE DOT | fullwidthkatakana middle dot | ||
| ꞏ | ꞏ | U+A78FLATIN LETTER SINOLOGICAL DOT | as a letter | ||
| ･ | ･ | U+FF65HALFWIDTH KATAKANA MIDDLE DOT | halfwidth katakana middle dot | ||
| 𐄁 | 𐄁 | U+10101AEGEAN WORD SEPARATOR DOT | word separator for Aegean scripts[26] (Linear A andLinear B) |
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