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Obelism is the practice of annotating
Image:Coronis.png, The coronis marked subsections.
Image:Paragraphos.png, The paragraphos was used for breaks.
Image:Hypodiastole.svg, 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 ...
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
Tradition ...
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 particip ...
" (for "Delete").
The obelos symbol (see obelus) 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, unli ...
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 p ...
. 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 ...
, 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 ''st ...
symbols, to indicate corrections, emendations, deletions, additions, and so on. Most used are the editorial coronis, the paragraphos, the forked paragraphos, the reversed forked paragraphos, the hypodiastole
The hypodiastole (Greek: , , ), also known as a diastole,''Oxford English Dictionary'', "diastole, ''n.''" Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1895. was an interpunct developed in late Ancient and Byzantine Greek texts before the separation o ...
, the downwards ancora, the upwards ancora
Upward may refer to:
Music
* ''Upwards'' (album), a 2003 album British hip-hop artist Ty
Organizations
* Upward Bound, a federally funded educational program within the United States
* Upward Bound High School, a school in Hartwick, New York
* ...
, 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.
hypodiastole
The hypodiastole (Greek: , , ), also known as a diastole,''Oxford English Dictionary'', "diastole, ''n.''" Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1895. was an interpunct developed in late Ancient and Byzantine Greek texts before the separation o ...
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, ...
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