Intro to Chinese Punctuation

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

Intro

Chinese punctuation usage is very similar to Western language punctuation, except that a few symbols are not used, and with few additional symbols.

First, here's a sample Chinese text, from 西游记 (Journey to the West; Monkey King)

盖闻天地之数，有十二万九千六百岁为一元。将一元分为十二会，乃子、丑、寅、卯、辰、巳、午、未、申、酉、戌、亥之十二支也。每会该一万八百岁。且就一日而论：子时得阳气，而丑则鸡鸣；寅不通光，而卯则日出；辰时食后，而巳则挨排；日午天中，而未则西蹉；申时晡而日落酉；戌黄昏而人定亥。譬于大数，若到戌会之终，则天地昏蒙而万物否矣。再去五千四百岁，交亥会之初，则当黑暗，而两间人物俱无矣，故曰混沌。又五千四百岁，亥会将终，贞下起元，近子之会，而复逐渐开明。邵康节曰：『冬至子之半，天心无改移。一阳初动处，万物未生时。』到此，天始有根。再五千四百岁，正当子会，轻清上腾，有日，有月，有星，有辰。日、月、星、辰，谓之四象。故曰，天开于子。又经五千四百岁，子会将终，近丑之会，而逐渐坚实。易曰：『大哉乾元！至哉坤元！万物资生，乃顺承天。』至此，地始凝结。再五千四百岁，正当丑会，重浊下凝，有水，有火，有山，有石，有土。水、火、山、石、土谓之五形。故曰，地辟于丑。又经五千四百岁，丑会终而寅会之初，发生万物。历曰：『天气下降，地气上升；天地交合，群物皆生。』至此，天清地爽，阴阳交合。再五千四百岁，正当寅会，生人，生兽，生禽，正谓天地人，三才定位。故曰，人生于寅。

Shared English and Chinese Punctuation Symbols

The following symbols are used in both English and Chinese, with the same meaning.

.
Period
,
Comma
:
Colon
;
Semicolon
?
Question mark
!
exclamation mark
“ ”
quotation mark (double)
‘ ’
quotation mark (single)
-
hyphen
—
dash (em-dash). (In Chinese, often 2 of them are used.)
( )
round brackets (aka parenthesis)
[ ]
square brackets
{ }
curly brackets (aka braces)

Chinese Punctuation Symbols Not in English

The following are punctuation symbols used in Chinese but not seen in Western languages.

SymbolChinese NameLiteral TranslationEnglish NameUnicode name
。句號sentence markChinese periodIDEOGRAPHIC FULL STOP
、頓號pause markenumeration commaIDEOGRAPHIC COMMA
〈 〉書名號 (單)book title mark (single)angle bracket (single)LEFT/RIGHT ANGLE BRACKET
《 》書名號 (雙)book title mark (double)angle bracket (double)LEFT/RIGHT DOUBLE ANGLE BRACKET
「 」單引號single quotation marksingle quotation markLEFT/RIGHT CORNER BRACKET
『 』雙引號double quotation markdouble quotation markLEFT/RIGHT WHITE CORNER BRACKET
〔 〕六角括號six angles brackettortoise shell bracketLEFT/RIGHT TORTOISE SHELL BRACKET
【 】黑方頭括號black square bracketblack lenticular bracketLEFT/RIGHT BLACK LENTICULAR BRACKET
〖 〗白方頭括號white square bracketwhite lenticular bracketLEFT/RIGHT WHITE LENTICULAR BRACKET

Chinese Period 。

The Chinese period symbol 。, has the same semantics as English period, but with full width. (meaning, it occupies the same square as a Chinese character. Most letters of Western alphabets are so-called half-width, because in general they are half the width of a Chinese character.)

In Unicode, almost all Western lang punctuation symbols also have a Asian variant that's full width. Here are some examples commonly used in Chinese writing:

For a complete list of full version of English characters, see: Unicode Full-Width Characters.

Note that Chinese can be written both vertically and horizontally. Vertical is traditional, but due to Western language's influence, horizontal, left to right, is the common practice today in all Chinese speaking regions (except Taiwan newspapers). Horizontal practice is started by China. Quote from Wikipedia:

People's Republic of China decided to use horizontal writing. All newspapers in China changed from vertical to horizontal alignment on January 1, 1956.

The problem with vertical writing is that it's hard to intermix with Western languages (names, phrases, quotes), scientific formula, and hard to use in software because the first 30 or so years of software are developed using English for English users (in US).

With the adoption of horizontal writing, the Western style glyph (half-with) for period, comma, colon, question mark, etc are sometimes seen, especially in online chat or personal blog. Though, they are considered eyesore.

Enumeration Comma 、

The symbol 、, in Chinese is called 頓號. Literally it means “pause symbol”. Proper English name for it is Enumeration Comma. The Unicode name for the char is “IDEOGRAPHIC COMMA”.

In Chinese, when you have a sequence of things, such as “in my bag, i have: peach, banana, cherry.”, you don't use comma to separate them, you use this enumeration comma. So, you'd write: “in my bag, i have: peach、banana、cherry.”. (See also: English Writing Style: Oxford Comma and Strippers)

Quotation Marks 「」 『』

Quotation signs are pretty much used the same way in most languages, European or Asian. They are a pair of matching glyph. The 2 glyph for left and right are usually symmetrically opposite in their appearance. For example, French uses «LEFT/RIGHT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK» and also ‹SINGLE LEFT/RIGHT-POINTING ANGLE QUOTATION MARK›.

(Some euro countries, e.g. Finnish and Swedish, use the same symbol for both opening and closing, quite idiotic. See: The Moronicities of Typography.)

Also, usually there's a double and single version. For example, in US, if you have a quote within a quote, the outer is double, the inner is single. More level of nesting alternate the double and single.

Whether non-nested quotation should use the double or single version differ by region. USA uses “double” as primary, while UK uses ‘single’ as primary.

In China, the Western style “matching curly quote” is often used. In fact, they are the government's official quotation symbols, both “double” and ‘single’. Double as primary and single as secondary, same as US.

The traditional Chinese quotation symbol is 「single corner bracket」 and 『double corner bracket』. They are used in China too, but more so in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The following are the vertical versions:

Title Brackets 〈〉《》

One interesting symbol used in Chinese is the angle bracket 《》 and single version 〈〉. These are used for book titles. The double version is primary. The single version is often used for chapter names, or titles of film, song, show, etc, or nested title. (note, these are different in appearance from the French's «» and ‹›.)

A well-established alternative practice for marking book titles is to use wavy underline. But that's going out of fashion in digital age because it's not as easy to produce on computer as compared to simply typing 2 matching chars. (Also interesting to note, that Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) so far does not support wavy underline.)

Note that in Western langs, the convention for book title is to slant the print (aka “italics”) and without any delimiter or explicit marking.

The following are the vertical versions:

Other Brackets 【】〖〗〔〕⦗⦘ 〘〙

Now, there's also these brackets, roughly in order of frequency of occurrence: 【BLACK LENTICULAR BRACKET】, 〖WHITE LENTICULAR BRACKET〗, 〔TORTOISE SHELL BRACKET〕. They are frequently seen, especially from older books. These are the traditional brackets for Chinese. The meaning and usage varies. They are analogous to Western's (paren), [square], {curly}. The Western style brackets are commonly seen in Chinese today too, though the Chinese lenticular bracket is still common.

The following are more variation of brackets, but rarely seen:

Reference