Latin and Cyrillic require space after sentence stops as delimiters between sentences, as does Korean.

Writing systems do not require space after the final sentence stop in a paragraph.

Chinese and Japanese by default do not use space after sentence stops.

None of the writing systems in scope of this framework has space before sentence stops.

In French in France, Switzerland and Belgium, some punctuation marks, including some sentence stops, are preceded by a non-breaking thin space (U+202F) (“French spacing”). In common practice, a full non-breaking space (U+00A0) is used instead. French spacing is not used for most punctuation marks in Canada for French.

Korean sentence stops are half-width.

Chinese and Japanese sentence stops are full-width.

In text mixed between Latin and Chinese or Japanese, usual practice is to follow the document main language. Fine typography will apply kerning in such contexts so that the switch in width does not look obtrusive.

Some desktop publishing applications in Japanese and CJK OpenType fonts allow switching contextually between full-width and half-width punctuation (欧文混在時の約物処理 “treat punctuation when mixed with Western text”).

Latin, Cyrillic: FULL STOP <.> (U+002E)

Traditional Chinese: IDEOGRAPHIC FULL STOP <。> (U+3002)

Simplified Chinese: IDEOGRAPHIC FULL STOP <。> (U+3002)

Japanese: IDEOGRAPHIC FULL STOP <。> (U+3002)

Korean: FULL STOP <.> (U+002E)

French spacing does NOT apply (5.1.1.3).

The placement of period in CJK is different by directionality, but this does not involve different Unicode codepoints, so the browser/operating system is assumed to handle positioning appropriately. (While there is a PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL IDEOGRAPHIC FULL STOP <︒> (U+FE12), this is only included in Unicode as a compatibility character.)

Latin, Cyrillic: QUESTION MARK <?> (U+003F)

Traditional Chinese: FULLWIDTH QUESTION MARK <？> (U+FF1F)

Simplified Chinese: FULLWIDTH QUESTION MARK <？> (U+FF1F)

Japanese: FULLWIDTH QUESTION MARK <？> (U+FF1F)

Korean: QUESTION MARK <?> (U+003F)

French spacing applies (5.1.1.3).

In Spanish and languages under Spanish cultural influence (e.g. Catalan), INVERTED QUESTION MARK <¿> (U+00BF) is used at the start of an interrogative sentence or phrase. If a declarative sentence contains an interrogative phrase, only the interrogative phrase is so delimited:

Latin, Cyrillic: EXCLAMATION MARK <!> (U+0021)

Traditional Chinese: FULLWIDTH EXCLAMATION MARK <！> (U+FF01)

Simplified Chinese: FULLWIDTH EXCLAMATION MARK <！> (U+FF01)

Japanese: FULLWIDTH EXCLAMATION MARK <！> (U+FF01)

Korean: EXCLAMATION MARK <!> (U+0021)

French spacing applies (5.1.1.3).

In Spanish and languages under Spanish cultural influence (e.g. Catalan), INVERTED EXCLAMATION MARK <¡> (U+00A1) is used at the start of an exclamatory sentence or phrase.

The same locale considerations apply for Catalan as for inverted question mark.

The contexts in which the minor break is marked between phrases vary significantly by language and by style.

The types of phrase eligible to be so marked also vary significantly by language and by style; it usually includes both clauses (which express a complete predicate, including both a subject and a verb) and smaller units such as noun phrases, or successive adjectives.

In many writing systems, the same mark (comma) is used for minor phrase separators and other separating functions, such as enumerator delimiters (5.3.2), and decimal point (8.1.2).

Latin, Cyrillic: COMMA <,> (U+002C)

Traditional Chinese: FULLWIDTH COMMA <，> (U+FF0C)

Simplified Chinese: FULLWIDTH COMMA <，> (U+FF0C)

Japanese: IDEOGRAPHIC COMMA <、> (U+3001)

Korean: COMMA <,> (U+002C)

In Japanese and Simplified Chinese horizontal text, the comma appears at the bottom right. In Japanese and Simplified Chinese vertical text, the comma appears below and to the right of the character.

In Traditional Chinese, the comma appears at mid-height in both horizontal and vertical text orientations.

The contexts in which the major break is marked between phrases varies significantly by language and by style. In many styles, it is avoided as an overly fine distinction from the minor break (comma).

The phrases separated by a major phrase separator are typically independent clauses grammatically (i.e. complete predicates, with both a subject and a verb).

Latin, Cyrillic: SEMICOLON <;> (U+002C)

Traditional Chinese: FULLWIDTH SEMICOLON <；> (U+FF1B)

Simplified Chinese: FULLWIDTH SEMICOLON <；> (U+FF1B)

Japanese: FULLWIDTH SEMICOLON <；> (U+FF1B)

Korean: SEMICOLON <;> (U+002C)

French spacing applies (5.1.1.3).

Sometimes punctuation is used to separate a term from a description in a definition list, although the default is to use only indented space. This function can be regarded as an extension of the introductory phrase separator. In Metanorma Presentation XML, this is notated as <span class="fmt-dt-delim">.

Latin: COLON <:> (U+003A)

Cyrillic: COLON <:> (U+003A)

Traditional Chinese: FULLWIDTH COLON <：> (U+FF1A)

Simplified Chinese: FULLWIDTH COLON <：> (U+FF1A)

Japanese: FULLWIDTH COLON <：> (U+FF1A)

Korean: COLON <:> (U+003A)

An interrupted ending to a sentence can be indicated by a breaking phrase separator. Similarly, a sentence start which counts as a resumption from a previous interruption can be indicated by a breaking phrase separator.

Latin, Cyrillic: EM DASH <—> (U+2014)

Traditional Chinese: TWO EM DASH <⸺> (U+2E3A)

Simplified Chinese: TWO EM DASH <⸺> (U+2E3A)

Japanese: TWO EM DASH <⸺> (U+2E3A)

Korean: EM DASH <—> (U+2014)

The placement of em-dash in CJK is different by directionality, but this does not involve different Unicode codepoints, so the browser/operating system is assumed to handle positioning appropriately. (While there is a PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL EM DASH <︱> (U+FE31), this is only included in Unicode as a compatibility character.)

The interpunct (5.3.2.3) is used instead of hyphen, dash, or colon in Japanese vertical text.

An interrupted ending to a sentence can be indicated by a breaking phrase separator. In that case, the breaking phrase separator replaces the sentence stop.

The hesitancy phrase separator is closely related to the breaking phrase separator, and in past practice was conflated with it.

The hesitancy phrase separator is routinely conflated with the missing text mark (8.2.1), but the two interact differently with other punctuation.

“Hesitancy” is to be broadly understood, and it includes pauses, interruption, speechlessness, deliberate silence, longing, and surprise. Different languages place different expectations on the punctuation mark.

The hesitancy phrase separator is associated with emotion, and is therefore avoided in formal writing, such as is in scope of Metanorma. The missing text mark, on the other hand, is entirely consistent with formal writing.

Latin, Cyrillic: in fine typography, a single HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS <…> (U+2026) is used. In informal practice, three periods in succession are used as well.

CJK: the ellipse can be presented as three dots, or six dots.

If the hesitation follows the final phrase in a sentence, some practice has the hesitancy mark replace the sentence stop (e.g. common British English practice). Other practice appends the sentence stop to the hesitancy mark, as a fourth dot (e.g. Chicago Manual of Style).

Russian combines not only declarative but interrogative and exclamatory sentence stops with the hesitancy mark and missing text mark: <?..>, <!..>.

Unlike other stops, the hesitation phrase separator can appear at the start of a sentence.

In horizontal directonality in Traditional Chinese and Japanese, the ellipse is vertically centered; in vertical directionality, it is horizontally centered.

In Simplified Chinese, the ellipse is usually aligned to the baseline in horizontal directionality; in vertical directionality, it is still horizontally centered.

In vertical directionality in CJK, Unicode has a codepoint for VERTICAL ELLIPSIS <⋮> (U+22EE), and it is not designated as a compatibility character. However as with other punctuation, the browser/operating system is assumed to handle positioning appropriately, so MIDLINE HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS would still be expected to be entered.

In verses presented as poetry, verses are globally separated by line breaks, which are not regarded as punctuation.

In prose transcription of poetry, verses are often separated by a slash: SOLIDUS </> (U+002F).

When slash is used to separate verses, there is a space either side of the slash.

In formal documents of the type considered by Metanorma, the only permitted breaks at a document level higher than a paragraph are clauses, and new clauses are explicitly indicated by clause headings. Section separators are characteristic of extended literary prose, such as novels; even though novels have chapters, they do not have subchapters, and breaks in a chapter are indicated by a section separator instead.

There is overlap between the section separator and the missing text mark (8.2.1), when the scope of the missing text mark is at the paragraph level.

The cover term for the traditional punctuation mark for a section separator, used in literary writing, is the dinkus. The usual contemporary form of the dinkus is three asterisks or three bullets in a row, with space between them.

In word processing and HTML documents, this function is conveyed by the horizontal rule (<hr/>), which is not regarded as punctuation.

The Japanese PART ALTERNATION MARK <〽> (U+303D) has narrower application, being used in the Renga genre of poetry to indicate the start of a song. The LEFT CORNER BRACKET <「> (U+300C) may also be used.

The dinkus typically appears centrally aligned, on a line of its own, with vertical spacing before and after it.

In contemporary practice, the dinkus is mutually exclusive with clause headings; in older usage a dinkus can appear before a new clause heading, especially when it conveys an emotional break.

There is variation in whether the enumeration delimiter is used in a list of two items.

There is (linguistic) variation in whether a conjunction is used before the last item in a list, and (punctuation) variation in whether the enumeration delimiter is used before the last item. Thus English allows both A, B and C and A, B, and C as style variants (the latter is known as the “Oxford comma”). Chinese allows both A、B及C and A、B、C.

The punctuation mark for the enumeration delimiter is often the same as that for the minor phrase separator (comma).

The punctuation mark for the enumeration delimiter is often the same as that for other separators; for example Japanese uses the interpunct as an enumeration delimiter, as a decimal point (8.1.2), and to separate professional titles, names, and positions (6.1.5).

Latin, Cyrillic: COMMA <,> (U+002C)

Traditional Chinese: IDEOGRAPHIC COMMA <、> (U+3001)

Simplified Chinese: IDEOGRAPHIC COMMA <、> (U+3001)

Japanese: IDEOGRAPHIC COMMA <、> (U+3001)

Korean: COMMA <,> (U+002C)

When lists contain mixed scripts in CJK, follow the punctuation convention of the list’s primary language while maintaining readability.

Japanese also supports HALFWIDTH KATAKANA MIDDLE DOT <･> (U+FF65) for the interpunct.

In Japanese vertical text, the interpunct appears centered rather than at a specific corner position.

The default list itemisation mark for unordered list items is BULLET <•> (U+2022). Alternatives include the em dash, en dash, and WHITE BULLET <◦> (U+25E6).

List items of different levels in a list are typically indented to differing degrees, so as to indicate that level.

The list itemisation mark is typically separated from the list item content by a tab (a horizontal space of consistent width between different list items).

List items are typically rendered with hanging indentation, so that their list itemisation marks and content lines up across multiple-line list items.

In word processing and HTML, list itemisation marks are not entered directly by the author, but are indicated to be rendered via list markup. The selection of list itemisation mark in unordered lists is almost never specified in markup, but in the document configuration/document stylesheet.

In French in France, Switzerland and Belgium, for paired quotation delimiters, the opening delimiter (left guillemet, left single guillemet) is followed by a non-breaking thin space (U+202F), as an instance of French spacing (5.1.1.3); the closing delimiter (right guillemet, right single guillemet) is preceded by a non-breaking thin space, as the mirror counterpart of French spacing. As with other French spacing, in common practice, a full non-breaking space (U+00A0) is used instead.

Paired quotation markers are often conflated with title marks (7.3.6).

Latin, Cyrillic: There is significant variation among Latin and Cyrillic script languages on their choice of paired quotation delimiter and their orientation, and different languages and locales draw from 15 Unicode codepoints.

Traditional Chinese: LEFT CORNER BRACKET <「> (U+300C) and RIGHT CORNER BRACKET <」> (U+300D)

Simplified Chinese: LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK <“> (U+201C) and RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK <”> (U+201D).

Japanese: LEFT CORNER BRACKET <「> (U+300C) and RIGHT CORNER BRACKET <」> (U+300D).

Korean: South Korea uses the same punctuation marks as English. North Korea uses full-width guillemets, LEFT DOUBLE ANGLE BRACKET <《> (U+300A) and RIGHT DOUBLE ANGLE BRACKET <》> (U+300B).

The placement of quotation marks in CJK is different by directionality, but this does not involve different Unicode codepoints, so the browser/operating system is assumed to handle positioning appropriately. (While there is e.g. a PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL LEFT CORNER BRACKET <﹁> (U+FE41) and PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL RIGHT CORNER BRACKET <﹂> (U+FE42), these are only included in Unicode as a compatibility character.)

Quotation marks in English are routinely typed as straight quotes, QUOTATION MARK <"> (U+0022), with the expectation that software will transform them contextually into paired quotation marks (“smart quotes”).

Simplified Chinese uses the font to make Western quotation marks (U+201C, U+201D) full-width, instead of deploying distinct codepoints: REVERSED DOUBLE PRIME QUOTATION MARK `<〝>, (U+301D) DOUBLE PRIME QUOTATION MARK <〞> (U+301E).

In vertical directionality, Traditional and Simplified Chinese use presentation variants of the codepoints LEFT WHITE CORNER BRACKET <『> (U+300E) and RIGHT WHITE CORNER BRACKET < 』> (U+300F).

The English closing nested paired quotation delimiter is often conflated with the elision mark (7.3.3).

Latin, Cyrillic: There is significant variation among Latin and Cyrillic script languages on their choice of paired quotation delimiter, and different languages and locales draw from 15 Unicode codepoints.

Traditional Chinese: LEFT WHITE CORNER BRACKET <『> (U+300E) and RIGHT WHITE CORNER BRACKET <』> (U+300F).

Simplified Chinese: LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK <‘> (U+2018) and RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK <’> (U+2019).

Japanese: LEFT WHITE CORNER BRACKET <『> (U+300E) and RIGHT WHITE CORNER BRACKET <』> (U+300F).

Korean: South Korea uses the same punctuation marks as English. North Korea uses full-width guillemets, LEFT ANGLE BRACKET <〈> (U+3008) and RIGHT ANGLE BRACKET <〉> (U+3009).

The placement of quotation marks in CJK is different by directionality, but this does not involve different Unicode codepoints, so the browser/operating system is assumed to handle positioning appropriately. (While there is e.g. a PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL LEFT WHITE CORNER BRACKET <﹃> (U+FE43) and PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL RIGHT WHITE CORNER BRACKET <﹄> (U+FE44), these are only included in Unicode as a compatibility character.)

Nested quotation marks in English are routinely typed as straight quotes, APOSTROPHE <'> (U+0027), with the expectation that software will transform them contextually into paired quotation marks (“smart quotes”).

Simplified Chinese uses the font to make Western quotation marks (U+2018, U+2019) full-width, instead of deploying distinct codepoints

In vertical directionality, Traditional and Simplified Chinese use presentation variants of the codepoints LEFT CORNER BRACKET <「> (U+300C) and RIGHT CORNER BRACKET <」> (U+300D).

Latin, Cyrillic: Properly HORIZONTAL BAR <―> (U+2015) is used; in practice EM DASH <—> (U+2014) is usually used.

The Japanese PART ALTERNATION MARK <〽> (U+303D) has narrower application, being used in Noh drama to indicate the start of a speaker’s or the chorus’ part. The opening square quotation mark <「> may also be used.

In formal usage, ampersand is restricted to citations of multiple authors, and to disambiguate scope of conjunction (items in a list joined by “and”, some of which are themselves joined by “and”).

In Latin script, the default conjunctive mark is AMPERSAND <&> (U+0026).

By default the ampersand is consider to stand in for “and” as a word, and is spaced either side as a word. It is printed without spaces when it is part of an acronym, e.g. R&D = “Research and Development”.

The disjunctive mark can be used to express inclusive “or”, or “and”; in that case it overlaps with the conjunctive mark and the range mark.

English uses both a disjunctive mark and range mark to express points on an itinerary; e.g. Shanghai/Nanjing/Wuhan/Chongqing or Shanghai–Nanjing–Wuhan–Chongqing

In English, the expression of the disjunctive mark is the slash, SOLIDUS </> (U+002F).

Normally there is no space either side of the slash. Some style guides require space when the phrase being joined contains a space:

Latin script conflates the punctuation marks for verbal and numeric ranges. CJK uses distinct punctuation marks for verbal and numeric ranges. The latter function is represented in Metanorma i18n files as punct.numeric-en-dash.

The range mark is also used to contrast two items, or convey a relationship between them: Mother–daughter relationship,

Latin, Cyrillic: In good typography, EN DASH <–> (U+2013) is used. Informal use typically uses the hyphen, and some style guides prescribing formal use prefer the hyphen when conveying a relationship, in its role as a word divider (6.1.8).

Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean: EN DASH <–> (U+2013), WAVE DASH <〜> (U+301C), FULLWIDTH TILDE <～> (U+FF5E).

Typically in Latin script there is no spacing around the en-dash. This differentiates it from the phrase stop use of the en-dash. Some style guides recommend spacing where it would avoid ambiguity in scope, e.g. 12 June – 3 July; others do not, e.g. 12 June–3 July.

In French, the range mark can be open on either side of the interval: ~3 means “up to 3”, 100~ means “100 or more”.

In CJK, verbal range is conveyed through en-dash. Tilde and single em-dash can also be used for verbal range.

Numeric range in CJK is normally wave dash. Some Japanese academic writing uses colons instead of wave dash, though this is not universal.

There is a continuity of function between the name separator and the word divider in CJK, particularly as CJK uses ideographs for words (so words are not consistently broken down), and it uses word dividers only sparingly.

The following are the more refined classes of name separator; because of the fluidity of classes, they are enumerated here rather than being broken down into separate semantic functions in the framework.

Caption markers (6.2) include a subset of name separators, but these are discussed separately, as a core concern of Metanorma configuration.

Latin, Cyrillic: In Western scripts, this function is conflated, with the normal word separator (6.1.7) (space), with phrase stops (comma by default (5.2.2), colon for title/subtitle (5.2.4), both for organisation names), or with word divider (6.1.8) (hyphen, used in personal names).

CJK: Various forms of interpunct (5.3.2.3): MIDDLE DOT <·> (U+OOB7) in China, HYPHENATION POINT <‧> (U+2027) in Taiwan, KATAKANA MIDDLE DOT <・> (U+30FB) to separate Katakana words in Japanese.

The interpunct is half-width in Chinese in print, but full-width in online material.

The attribution mark is comparable to the caption separator (6.2.3) and the breaking phrase separator (5.2.5). It accordingly shares punctuation with them.

The em-dash is typically used. In less formal writing, the colon and the comma are also used.

When applied to a block quote, the attribution starts on a separate line, with the attribution mark dash. The separate line is typically indented.

When used inline, the attribution mark dash follows the quotation directly.

In Latin and Cyrillic, this function is fulfilled by the space, which is not regarded as punctuation at all. The space is applied universally as a word separator.

CJK by contrast defaults to not using word separators, outside of special contexts (here considered as name separators). CJK therefore has scriptio continua.

There are circumstances in which a word separator is necessary in careful text in CJK. Japanese specifically uses the interpunct to separate ordinary Japanese words, outside of the special cases of name separators (6.1.5), where the intended meaning would be unclear if the characters were written side-by-side. It is more commonly used to separate foreign words and names when written in kana: パーソナル・コンピューター (pāsonaru·konpyūtā “personal computer”).

The word divider differs from the name separator in scope: name dividers operate on groupings of words, the word divider operates within a word.

The grammatical word divider (6.1.9) is a special case of the word divider.

The hyphen (6.1.10) is a special case of the word divider.

The divisions that a word divider makes can vary in scope. What is divided up may be a compound consisting of meaningful units: independent words, or morphemes (e.g. prefixes: de-emphasise). Or, what is divided up may be a single meaningful unit, broken up into phonetic units (syllables, or letters: syllabification or spelling out of a word).

The extent to which the word divider is used in compound words varies by language and by style. The use of hyphen to indicate compound words (e.g. pigeon-hole, craftily-constructed chair) is on the decline in English.

There may be two levels of division represented, with different dividers used to differentiate between them. This applies because here are two actual levels of grouping, or because a component being connected is a multi-word expression with space in it

In Latin and Cyrillic, the default word divider is the hyphen, HYPHEN-MINUS <-&#x200c;> (U+002D). Unicode also has HYPHEN <‐> (U+2010) to disambiguate it from the minus sign (8.1.3), but this “Unicode hyphen” is little used.

The use of a grammatical word divider distinct from the general word divider is idiosyncratic, and inconsistent between languages.

The use of the grammatical word divider is also less widespread than the elision mark, with which English conflates it.

In Latin and Cyrillic, the grammatical word divider is usually the apostrophe.

The hyphen is in routine use in Latin and Cyrillic.

The word delimiter is alien to CJK; accordingly, the hyphen is also alien to CJK.

An optional hyphen, SOFT HYPHEN (U+00AD) is often used in word processing, which is only rendered when near a line break.

The function of the identifier divider and the word divider are quite similar: they both are breaking up a token and showing its internal structure. They differ in that one divides a linguistic word, and the other divides a non-linguistic token.

The function of the identifier divider is also similar to the decimal point, as a number token divider; however decimal points are dealt with separetely, as numeric formatting.

Identifier dividers can apply to numbers as identifiers, but are distinct from decimal points in that they don’t have an arithmetic function. So when separating groups of digits in a phone number or a date, the hyphen is distinct from a decimal point.

The components of a numeric date are also split by identifier divider.

In the case of hierarchical identifiers of entities in a document, such as clauses, Metanorma Presentation XML notates this as <span class="fmt-autonum-delim">.

The usual identifier divider is the hyphen. In Unicode, the identifier divider function is properly indicated with FIGURE DASH <‒> (U+2012), as that symbol is designed to have the same width as Arabic numerals.

Period, slash, colon and parentheses are also used idiosyncratically, through analogy with their core meanings (hyphen as a word divider; sentence stop as delimiter of a meaningful unit; slash as a disjunctive mark; colon as an introductory stop; parentheses as additional material).

Identifier delimiters distinct from word delimiters are very rare. The most common use of them is in structured documents such as under Metanorma, for subfigures and formulas. Whether an identifier delimiter is used is a matter of style convention.

The identifier delimiter is similar in function to title marks (7.3.6) and emphasis marks (7.4.2).

Metanorma Presentation XML currently notates this function as <span class="fmt-autonum-delim">, although this is properly the notation for identifier dividers.

The usual identifier delimiter is the close parenthesis, or surrounding parentheses.

Different kinds of entity can take different punctuation. Ordered list items are commonly delimited with a closing parenthesis instead of a period.

Latin, Cyrillic: Period is the most common caption number delimiter, if a delimiter is used at all. Closing parentheses are common for ordered list items and footnotes.

Different kinds of entity can take different punctuation. For example, a document may use period as a caption separator for clauses, but dash for tables and figures.

This function overlaps with the caption separator. If a caption number delimiter is used, a distinct separator is usually not used after it. The following illustrates different possible configurations.

Latin, Cyrillic: All of the following may appear in this function: space (i.e. no special punctuation), colon, comma, em-dash, period

This function is an extension of the sentence stop, since captions can be seen as sentences. Whether it is used or not depends on the publisher’s style conventions.

Latin, Cyrillic: if a caption stop is provided, it is a period.

This is a special case of a name separator (6.1.5), and shares punctuation with it: comma in Latin script.

Latin, Cyrillic: if a caption stop is provided, it is a period.

In some languages and styles, this function is conveyed by linguistic words instead of punctuation; e.g. in Japanese, the particle の “of” is used instead.

Annotation markers are routinely conflated with grouping markers (7.2), which enclose, separate, or highlight specific text elements.

Different kinds of annotation are indicated by different punctuation conventions, as described below, but these are usually not rigorously differentiated.

Parenthetical annotations can appear either within a sentence, or as a group of one or more sentences, between sentences.

Parenthetical annotations can be conflated with grouping markers (7.2), although they are less common in that function than for other paired punctuation marks.

As an extension of their role, parenthetical annotations can also occur within a word, to indicate that a part of the word is optional in some sense. This is a special case of a word divider. Examples include indication of singular and plural, or masculine and plural; both give the letter distinguishing those grammatical categories in parentheses, as optional:

Within a sentence, paired breaking phrase (em-dashes) separators (5.2.5) can overlap in function with parenthetical annotations: the parenthetical information is presented as a break from the main sentence, and another breaking phrase separators resumes the main sentence.

Latin, Cyrillic: By default, parenthetical annotations are rendered as LEFT PARENTHESIS <(> (U+0028) and RIGHT PARENTHESIS <)> (U+0029)

Paired em dashes are used within a sentence, when the parenthetic annotation can be presented as a sentence break and resumption. This is associated with less formal style.

CJK: FULLWIDTH LEFT PARENTHESIS <（> (U+FF08) and FULLWIDTH RIGHT PARENTHESIS <）> (U+FF09)

Languages differ as to whether parentheses enclosing italicised text should themselves be in italics. In German, they are expected to; in English, they are expected not to.

Parenthetical annotations can be nested within other parenthetical annotations. In informal writing, parentheses are used for both nesting and nested annotations. In formal writing, concern for ambiguity drives many style guides to require that the nested annotation be in brackets instead of parentheses, with any third level of nesting in curly brackets.

Latin, Cyrillic: there are two repertoires of marks drawn on for footnote marks

There is normally no space between text being annotated and the footnote reference.

There may be space between the footnote label and the annotation.

Footnote marks are normally superscripts, both as footnote references and as footnote labels.

Footnote references normally appear after sentence and phrase stops.

There are different conventions on whether the repertoire of footnote symbols is cycled through (i.e. restarted from 1 or *) each page, each chapter, or once in a document.

There may be a caption number delimiter after the footnote mark. Documents may differ in whether they place a caption number delimiter after footnote references and after footnote labels.

In some documents, a semantic distinction is made between different footnote mark sequences.

Grouping markers overlap with parenthetical annotations (7.1.2).

Grouping markers are used to indicate editorial interventions in text; the Leiden conventions (7.1.1.2, Example) are a very formalised equivalent of the less granular conventions expressed by grouping markers. Editorial interventions are not here treated as a distinct semantic function.

Brackets can be used to insert explanatory material, instead of parentheses. Typically the brackets represent an editorial intervention, rather than the authorial voice.

Latin, Cyrillic: LEFT SQUARE BRACKET <[> (U+005B), RIGHT SQUARE BRACKET <]> (U+005D)

CJK: FULLWIDTH RIGHT SQUARE BRACKET <［> (U+FF3B), FULLWIDTH RIGHT SQUARE BRACKET <］> (U+FF3D)

The main use of braces in English normal text is to indicate editorial additions and interpolations. They are overwhelmingly used in formal notation systems instead.

Latin, Cyrillic: LEFT CURLY BRACKET <{> (U+007B), RIGHT CURLY BRACKET <}> (U+007D)

CJK: FULLWIDTH RIGHT CURLY BRACKET <｛ > (U+FF5B), FULLWIDTH RIGHT CURLY BRACKET <｝> (U+FF5D)

Angle brackets have limited use to indicate editorial interpolation, or to indicate that a text was thought by a character instead of spoken. They are overwhelmingly used in formal notation systems instead.

Latin, Cyrillic: Good typography expects MATHEMATICAL LEFT ANGLE BRACKET <⟨> (U+27E8), MATHEMATICAL RIGHT ANGLE BRACKET < ⟩ > (U+27E9) for mathematical and normal text usage. In informal usage, and in many formal notation schemes such as computer programming, LESS-THAN SIGN <&#x3c;> (U+003C) and GREATER-THAN SIGN <&#x3e;> (U+003E) are used instead.

CJK: LEFT ANGLE BRACKET <〈 > (U+3008), RIGHT ANGLE BRACKET < ⟩ > (U+3009).

Semantic identification overlaps routinely with emphasis marks (7.4.2), and with quotation markers (5.4).

Latin, Cyrillic: Punctuation marks for most semantic identification, other than abbreviation marks, are not used in contemporary Latin and Cyrillic practice—although number marks were commonplace in ancient and mediaeval versions of those writing systems.

Latin, Cyrillic: the usual abbreviation mark is the period.

CJK: while CJK languages do form truncated expressions (e.g. Běidà 北大 for Běijīng Dàxué 北京大学 “Peking University”), abbreviation marks are not used explicitly.

There is variation as to whether an abbreviation of a multi-word phrase retains the spaces of its source phrase (U. S. vs U.S.).

There is variation by language, style, and instance as to when to use the abbreviation mark, and whether to use abbreviation marks within an acronym (N.A.T.O. vs NATO, etc. vs etc).

Letters may be deleted from the beginning, the middle, or the end of the base form.

Letters may be deleted from a single word derived from a phrase; the resulting word is called a contraction.

Numbers may also be deleted, specifically in expressions for decades (this is an English-specific convention):

Elision marks often differentiate colloquial forms from formal forms, and therefore words using elision marks are often avoided in formal style.

Elision marks prioritise the formal form of a language, deriving elided forms from it; that can make its use politically contentious, if the prioritisation of that form becomes controversial.

A similar backlash has occured in the Anglosphere against other such transcription of non-standard English (“eye dialect”).

Latin, Cyrillic: in fine typography, RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK <’> (U+2019) is used as the elision mark. In typewriter usage, which is inherited in online usage, APOSTROPHE <'> (+0027) is used.

There is variation as to whether an abbreviation of a multi-word phrase retains the spaces of its source phrase (U. S. vs U.S.).

There is no space before an elision mark in a contraction, even if the elision mark denotes the start of a new day (it’s < it is.)

Data-entry of the straight APOSTROPHE character is automatically corrected by word processors to the curved RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK character. The conversion uses the identical mechanism as smart quotes for quotation marks (5.4.3).

The RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK punctuation mark is ambiguous between a quotation mark and an elision mark, as indeed its Unicode name indicates. That means that initial elision marks are incorrectly corrected from the straight quote: it is treated as an initial quotation mark, and changed to LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK, whereas initial elision marks are always RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK.

Hebrew and Greek have distinct cardinal number marks (gershayim and geresh in Hebrew, keraia in Greek), including disambiguating marks for counts of thousands (quote mark in Hebrew, lower keraia in Greek) and for reciprocal fractions (double keraia in Greek).

Roman numbers used an overbar in antiquity to indicate that they were numbers; as it happens, an overbar (vinculum) was also used in the same period, to indicate that the number was to be multiplied by a thousand (so V͞I was used for both “6” and “6,000”). The number mark is rare in contemporary usage of Roman numbers.

In Romance languages such as French and Spanish, an abbreviation of a word for “number” is used, usually an abbreviation of Italian numero. In French and Spanish, this is n^o, with the o superscript. In British English, No. is used. In German, Nr. is used. Such abbreviations are not to be regarded as punctuation.

The number sign NUMERO SIGN <№> (U+2116) is very common in use in Russian and Bulgarian; it is derived from the Latin script abbrevation.

In American English, NUMBER SIGN <#> (U+0023) (hash) is used.

The abbreviations of “number” and their derivatives, including the Numero sign, are followed by space.

The number sign (hash) is not followed by a space.

Latin, Cyrillic: this is by default handled through italics rather than a punctuation mark. Quotation marks are often used instead, although in more formal referencing, quotation marks are used as secondary title marks instead.

Traditional Chinese: WAVY LOW LINE (U+FE4F) is used as official title markup, particularly in texts that also use the proper name mark.

Simplified Chinese: uses《…​》for titles.

Japanese: 『…​』(double quotes) are used for book titles.

The title mark is associated with the name separator (6.1.5), to separate components of a bibliographic reference entry.

The title mark is associated with the name separator (6.1.5), to delimit titles from subtitles.

Latin, Cyrillic: subtitles are not marked up as a separate span from titles, and Western script referencing relies instead on the name separator to differentiate titles from subtitles.

Japanese: WAVE DASH <〜> (U+301C) can be used to mark subtitles: 〜概要〜

Latin, Cyrillic: this is by default handled through quotation marks.

Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese: Single title marks 〈…​〉() are used for article and chapter titles (LEFT ANGLE BRACKET <〈> (U+3008) and RIGHT ANGLE BRACKET <〉> (U+3009).)

Writing systems can use the name separator instead (6.1.5), to differentiate names from surrounding text.

Traditional Chinese: an underline is occasionally used, in didactic and ambiguous contexts (teaching materials, movie subtitles).

Use of the clause mark is now infrequent outside of legal documents, with the word for “clause” typically supplied instead. In ISO documents, a dot-delimited numeral on its own (i.e. featuring an <identifier-divider>>) is understood to be a clause reference, without an explicit indication of the cross-reference scope (“clause”).

Latin: SECTION SIGN <§> (U+00A7)

The clause mark is linked to the following identifier with a non-breaking space.

When multiple clauses are referenced, the section sign may be duplicated: “§§ 13–21”. This is analogous to cross-reference abbreviations of reference locality types, such as “pp.” for “pages”.

Use of the paragraph mark is infrequent outside of legal documents, with the word for “paragraph” typically supplied instead.

There is limited use of the paragraph mark to represent carriage return at the end of a paragraph, or the concept of a paragraph: that use is not properly punctuation.

Latin: PILCROW SIGN <¶> (U+00B6).

The paragraph mark is linked to the following identifier with a non-breaking space.

The range of functions for which highlight markers are used is open-ended, and often overlaps with other semantic functions. This includes emphasis on the part of the author; emphasis on the part of a speaker in direct speech; use–mention distinction (so citation of words as subjects of discussion, as opposed to use of words in language); titles and names of entities; and foreign words.

The extent of use of highlight markers varies by language and style.

Latin and Cyrillic do not use punctuation in this function, and resort instead to typographical styling, including italics, boldface, and underlining. These are not in scope of this framework, except where Metanorma needs to alternate between typographical styling in Latin/Cyrillic, and punctuation marks in CJK.

CJK does not use italics, although it does use boldface.

CJK emphasis marks are a diacritic applied to every character in the text span to be emphasised. Chinese is usually restricted to using an underdot. Japanese uses a much wider range of emphasis marks: filled or hollow dot, circle, double circle, triangle, and “sesame” marks.

While the underdot emphasis mark could be realised as a distinct Unicode character, CJK emphasis marks are treated in computer typesetting as markup. They are realised in CSS using the text-emphasis-style attribute. This means that Western and CJK emphasis marks are both treated as markup rather than as punctuation.

CJK emphasis marks are rare online and unsupported in many Word processors. (Microsoft Word also supports a smaller range of emphasis marks in Japanese than does HTML CSS or XSL:FO.)

The decimal point is a special case of an identifier divider (6.1.11).

Latin, Cyrillic: there is variation among Western script languages: the Anglosphere uses a period, while Continental Europe uses a comma. In the case of ISO, even English-language texts adhere to Continental norms in using comma as a decimal point.

Traditional Chinese: the HYPHENATION POINT <‧> (U+2027) (interpunct) is used as a decimal point in Chinese numbers: 三‧五 “3.5”.

Japanese: the same practice is followed, using the Japanese version of the interpunct, KATAKANA MIDDLE DOT <・> (U+30FB): 三・一四 “3.14”.

The same sign is used for negative numbers and for the arithmetic subtraction operator; the former is in scope of this framework, as negative numbers can appear outside the context of mathematical typesetting, inserted into normal text.

Fine typography prefers to use the distinct MINUS SIGN <−> (U+2212) in mathematical use. Informal use uses HYPHEN-MINUS <-> (U+002D).

The ratio function is a generalisation of both the fraction sign and the division sign in mathematics.

Proportions can include a proportion of completion, e.g. Page 17/35, indicating how many pages have been traversed out of a total of 35.

In English, both colon and slash are used: 1:7, 1/7.

TILDE <~> (U+007E) is used by default

The ellipse is conflated with the hesitancy phrase separator (5.2.6), but the two interact differently with other punctuation.

The same mark, the elllipse, is used as for the hesitancy phrase separator.

When the omitted material is part of a word, e.g. out of religious or social taboo, or anonymisation, one or two em dashes are used traditionally. For taboo deletion, asterisk is also used; for more expressive or jocular deletion, a range of symbols is used.

When the missing text mark represents one or more missing words, it is usually treated for spacing as a separate word, rather than as punctuation. Therefore unlike the hesitancy phrase separator, the missing text mark is preceded by space as a word separator, just as a word would. This extends to treating the missing text mark as a distinct sentence.

So British practice, as reflected in the Oxford Style Guide, has the hesitancy mark replace the sentence stop, but the missing text mark appear after a sentence stop. It also has space before both the missing text mark and the hesitancy mark.

But as an illustration of the flux around spacing rules: the University of Oxford Style Guide (which applies to the university rather than to the commercial printer) requires no space around the missing text mark, and space after and not before the hesitancy mark:

The same special handling applies as for the hesitancy phrase separator.

As a sign of editorial intervention, the missing text mark is often put inside brackets (7.2.2) in English, to make the editorial intervention explicit, and to disambiguate it from the hesitancy phrase separator. In Spanish, parentheses are preferred in that role.

Repetition marks are infrequent in contemporary use outside of specific contexts, to avoid ambiguity. Space saving is not now as pressing a concern as it was in the past in texts.

English traditionally uses a ditto mark under each word to be repeated from a previous line; these can take the form of straight quotes, right smart quotes, or apostrophe.

Black pens, box of twenty ... $2.10 +
Blue  "     "   "  "      ... $2.35

In some citation conventions, if two consecutive reference entries in a bibliography have the same author(s), a repetition mark is used instead of repeating the author, consisting of two or three em-dashes.

In Chinese, IDEOGRAPHIC ITERATION MARK <々> (U+3005) is used in casual usage to repeat a character, but is no longer used in formal usage.

In Japanese, IDEOGRAPHIC ITERATION MARK <々> (U+3005) remains in common use for repeating a single kanji, and follows different norms from the Chinese instance of the punctuation mark.

Among Latin-script languages, a normal or superscript number <2> is used as an iteration mark in Filipino, Malay, and Indonesian, although in Indonesian this is no longer official practice.

colon (5.2.4)

comma (5.2.2)

enum-comma (5.3.2)

semicolon (5.2.3)

period (5.1.2)

close-paren (7.1.2)

open-paren (7.1.2)

close-bracket (7.2.2)

open-bracket (7.2.2)

question-mark (5.1.3)

exclamation-mark (5.1.4)

emphasis-mark (7.4.2)

em-dash (5.2.5)

en-dash (6.1.4)

number-en-dash (6.1.4)

open-quote (5.4.2)

close-quote (5.4.2)

open-nested-quote (5.4.3)

close-nested-quote (5.4.3)

ellipse (8.2.1)

open-title (7.3.6)

close-title (7.3.6)

open-secondary-title (7.3.8)

close-secondary-title (7.3.8)

colon: :

comma: ,

semicolon: ;

period: .

close-paren: )

open-paren: (

close-bracket: ]

open-bracket: [

question-mark: ?

exclamation-mark: !

em-dash: —

en-dash: –

number-en-dash: – (invoked depending on context — both surrounding characters need to be Unicode numbers)

open-quote: "

close-quote: "

ellipse: …

Quotation marks are out of scope, because of the ambiguity of apostrophe, and the high variability of quotation marks between languages of l10n() translation.

Enumeration delimiters are not supported directly in l10n(), because of the ambiguity of the comma. They are handled instead through the multiple_and i18n YAML value.

Title marks require explicit semantics to drive them, which are not available in the l10n() context, and introducing them is deferred to bibliographic processing.