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Obelism is the practice of annotating
Image:Coronis.png, The coronis marked subsections.
Image:Paragraphos.png, The
''Punctuation''
Obelism is the practice of annotating manuscript
A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced i ...
s with marks set in the margins. Modern obelisms are used by editors when proofreading
Proofreading is the reading of a galley proof or an electronic copy of a publication to find and correct reproduction errors of text or art. Proofreading is the final step in the editorial cycle before publication.
Professional
Traditional ...
a manuscript or typescript. Examples are "stet" (which is Latin for "Let it stand", used in this context to mean "disregard the previous mark") and "dele
The ''Diplomas de Español como Lengua Extranjera'' ( en, Diplomas of Spanish as a Foreign Language), or DELE, are official diplomas issued by the Spanish Instituto Cervantes on behalf of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science to participa ...
" (for "Delete").
The obelos symbol (see obelus
An obelus (plural: obeluses or obeli) is a term in typography that refers to a historical mark which has resolved to three modern meanings:
* Division sign
* Dagger
* Commercial minus sign (limited geographical area of use)
The word "obel ...
) gets its name from the spit, or sharp end of a lance
A lance is a spear designed to be used by a mounted warrior or cavalry soldier (lancer). In ancient and medieval warfare, it evolved into the leading weapon in cavalry charges, and was unsuited for throwing or for repeated thrusting, unlike s ...
in 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 pe ...
. An obelos was placed by editors on the margins of manuscripts, especially in Homer
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...
, to indicate lines that may not have been written by Homer. The system was developed by Aristarchus and notably used later by Origen
Origen of Alexandria, ''Ōrigénēs''; Origen's Greek name ''Ōrigénēs'' () probably means "child of Horus" (from , "Horus", and , "born"). ( 185 – 253), also known as Origen Adamantius, was an early Christian scholar, ascetic, and the ...
in his ''Hexapla
''Hexapla'' ( grc, Ἑξαπλᾶ, "sixfold") is the term for a critical edition of the Hebrew Bible in six versions, four of them translated into Greek, preserved only in fragments. It was an immense and complex word-for-word comparison of the ...
''. Origen marked spurious words with an opening obelos and a closing metobelos ("end of obelus").
There were many other such shorthand
Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to longhand, a more common method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek ''s ...
symbols, to indicate corrections, emendations, deletions, additions, and so on. Most used are the editorial coronis, the paragraphos
A paragraphos ( grc, , , from , 'beside', and , 'to write') was a mark in ancient Greek punctuation, marking a division in a text (as between speakers in a dialogue or drama) or drawing the reader's attention to another division mark, such as th ...
, the forked paragraphos, the reversed forked paragraphos, the hypodiastole, the downwards ancora, the upwards ancora, and the dotted right-pointing angle, which is also known as the . Loosely, all these symbols, and the act of annotation by means of them, are obelism.
These nine ancient Greek textual annotation symbols are also included in the supplemental punctuation list of ISO/IEC 10646 standard for character sets.
paragraphos
A paragraphos ( grc, , , from , 'beside', and , 'to write') was a mark in ancient Greek punctuation, marking a division in a text (as between speakers in a dialogue or drama) or drawing the reader's attention to another division mark, such as th ...
was used for breaks.
Image:Hypodiastole.svg, The hypodiastole separated words before the use of spaces.
Image:Diple-periestigmene.png, The dotted diple
Diple ( pluralia tantum; pronounced , other Croatian names: ''"misnjiče"'', ''"miješnice"'' and ''"mih"'') is a traditional woodwind musical instrument originating in the Adriatic Littoral. It is played in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Sloven ...
was also used for dubious lines.
Modern encoding
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...
encodes the following:
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Some of these were also used in Ancient Greek punctuation as word dividers.See also
* * * . A horizontal form of the dagger mark was used an obelus. * * *List of proofreader's marks
This article is a list of standard proofreader's marks used to indicate and correct problems in a text. Marks come in two varieties, abbreviations and abstract symbols. These are usually handwritten on the paper containing the text. Symbols are i ...
* General Punctuation
General Punctuation is a Unicode block containing punctuation, spacing, and formatting characters for use with all scripts and writing systems. Included are the defined-width spaces, joining formats, directional formats, smart quotes, archaic a ...
Unicode block containing punctuation, spacing, and formatting characters
References