For the

Korean language Korean is the first language, native language for about 81 million people, mostly of Koreans, Korean descent. It is the national language of both South Korea and North Korea. In the south, the language is known as () and in the north, it is kn ...

, South Korea mainly uses a combination of East Asian and European punctuation, while North Korea uses more of the East Asian punctuation style.

Traditional punctuation

In the traditional Korean system of writing, which was largely based on the Chinese writing system, punctuation was primarily used to make corrections or to help with the understanding of

hanja Hanja (; ), alternatively spelled Hancha, are Chinese characters used to write the Korean language. After characters were introduced to Korea to write Literary Chinese, they were adapted to write Korean as early as the Gojoseon period. () ...

, or Chinese characters. Some of the corrective punctuation marks included ⟨◦⟩ called 끼움표 (''kki-umpyo''), which was used for inserting, and ⟨▯⟩ called 삭제부 (''sakjebu'') which was used for deleting. The traditional writing system known as

gugyeol Gugyeol, or kwukyel, is a system for rendering texts written in Classical Chinese into understandable Korean. It was used chiefly during the Joseon dynasty, when readings of the Chinese classics were of paramount social importance. Thus, i ...

, used punctuation to interpret Chinese characters in a way Korean speakers could understand. One of the marks used in

was a dot ⟨•⟩ called 역독점 (''yeokdokjeom''), which was used to indicate reading order. The conclusion of an idea or thought was indicated by starting a new line of characters from the top, as opposed to the western style punctuation of periods and commas which had not been introduced yet.

Modern punctuation

The modern Korean punctuation system is largely based on European punctuation, with the use of periods (마침표, ''machimpyo''), commas (쉼표, ''swimpyo''), and question marks (물음표, ''mul-eumpyo''). Modern Korean is typically written horizontally using European punctuation. However, when it is written vertically, Korean writing tends to follow East Asian punctuation which includes ⟨。⟩ (고리점, ''goricheom'') as a period, ⟨、⟩ (모점, ''mocheom'') as a comma, and ⟨⟩ (겹낫표, ''gyeomnatpyo'') as quotation marks.

Differences from European punctuation

* Although commas are also used, especially in a digital environment due to the ease of typing, the

interpunct An interpunct , also known as an interpoint, middle dot, middot, centered dot or centred dot, is a punctuation mark consisting of a vertically centered dot used for interword separation in Classical Latin. ( Word-separating spaces did not appe ...

⟨⟩ is used for short in-line lists: "" Translation: "Apples, pears, peaches, and watermelons are all fruits." * Although the correct way to quote is to use double quotation marks in

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...

, and

guillemets Guillemets (, also , , ) are a pair of punctuation marks in the form of sideways double Chevron (insignia), chevrons, and , used as quotation marks in some languages. In some of these languages, "single" guillemets, and , are used for a quotat ...

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu River, Yalu (Amnok) an ...

, fullwidth quotes such as or are mostly used when it is written in vertical writing, for effective expression, or just to replace European quotation marks. *Many ancient Korean books contain thousands of words with no spaces between them, but when explicitly denoting a pause or break was necessary, ' marks such as "" and "" were used. * Since Korean is

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts), each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglu ...

, the rules regarding parentheses and spacing are different from European ones. For example, in the sentence "", inserting a space in between other letters and the parentheses will be an error, as marks (apple) as the topic and is not a separate word. * The wave dash ⟨⟩ is used to mark ranges in numbers: (, one to ten). However, normal

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 ...

is also permitted. * The tilde may also be used to indicate a long or drawn-out vowel ( or ), usually for comic or cute effect. * Certain European punctuation marks, like the apostrophe, colon/semi-colon, and dash are not typically used in written Korean.

North-South differences

In the North, guillemets and are the symbols used for quotes; in the South, quotation marks are equivalent to the English ones. and , are standard, although , , , and are commonly used.

References

* Lee, J. K. (2014). The korean punctuation systems. ''Acta Linguistica Asiatica, 4''(1), 29–41. https://doi.org/10.4312/ala.4.1.29-41 * Lim H. J., Zhu X. (2021). A study on the asymmetry of korean-chinese punctuation marks for korean translation education - focusing on comma (,) and period (.). ''The Language and Culture, 17''(1), 179-210. 10.18842/klaces.2021.17.1.008 * Anderson, P. S. (1948). Korean language reform. ''The Modern Language Journal'', ''32''(7), 508–511. https://doi.org/10.2307/318420 * Lee Y. O. (2010). How is the english dash to be translated into korean?. ''Translational Studies'', ''11''(2), 173-202. 10.15749/jts.2010.11.2.008 * Yoon, S. T. (2010). The creation of idu. ''Korea Journal'', ''50''(2), 97–123. https://doi.org/10.25024/kj.2010.50.2.97

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