Word divider

Not to be confused withWord mark (computer hardware).

Word divider
· ፡ space Latin interpunct Geʽez double point

Inpunctuation,aword divideris a form ofglyphwhich separates writtenwords.In languages which use theLatin,Cyrillic,andArabic Alpha bets,as well as other scripts of Europe and West Asia, the word divider is a blankspace,orwhitespace.This convention is spreading, along with other aspects of European punctuation, to Asia and Africa, where words are usually written without word separation.

Incharacter encoding,word segmentationdepends on which characters are defined as word dividers.

History

InAncient Egyptian,determinativesmay have been used as much to demarcate word boundaries as to disambiguate the semantics of words.Rarely inAssyrian cuneiform,but commonly in the later cuneiformUgaritic Alpha bet,a vertical stroke 𒑰 was used to separate words. InOld Persian cuneiform,a diagonally sloping wedge 𐏐 was used.

As the Alpha bet spread throughout the ancient world, words were often run together without division, and this practice remains or remained until recently in much of South and Southeast Asia. However, not infrequently in inscriptions a vertical line, and in manuscripts a single (·), double (:), or triple (⫶)interpunct(dot) was used to divide words. This practice was found inPhoenician,Aramaic,Hebrew,Greek,andLatin,and continues today withEthiopic,though there whitespace is gaining ground.

Scriptio continua

The earlyAlpha beticwriting systems, such as thePhoenician Alpha bet,had only signs forconsonants(although some signs for consonants could also stand for avowel,so-calledmatres lectionis). Without some form of visible word dividers, parsing a text into its separate words would have been a puzzle. With the introduction of letters representing vowels in theGreek Alpha bet,the need for inter-word separation lessened. The earliest Greek inscriptions used interpuncts, as was common in the writing systems which preceded it, but soon the practice ofscriptio continua,continuous writing in which all words ran together without separation became common.

Types

None

Alphabetic writing without inter-word separation, known asscriptio continua,was used in Ancient Egyptian. It appeared in Post-classical Latin after several centuries of the use of the interpunct.

Traditionally,scriptio continuawas used for theIndic Alpha betsof South and Southeast Asia andhangulof Korea, but spacing is now used with hangul and increasingly with the Indic Alpha bets.

TodayChineseandJapaneseare the most widely used scripts consistently written without punctuation to separate words, though other scripts such asThaiandLaoalso follow this writing convention. In Classical Chinese, a word and acharacterwere almost the same thing, so that word dividers would have been superfluous. AlthoughModern Mandarinhas numerous polysyllabic words, and each syllable is written with a distinct character, the conceptual link between character and word or at leastmorphemeremains strong, and no need is felt for word separation apart from what characters already provide. This link is also found in theVietnamese language;however, in theVietnamese Alpha bet,virtually all syllables are separated by spaces, whether or not they form word boundaries.

An example ofJavanese scriptscriptio continuaof the first article of declaration of human rights.

Space

Space is the most common word divider, especially inLatin script.

Traditional spacing examples from the 1911Chicago Manual of Style

Vertical lines

Ancient inscribed and cuneiform scripts such asAnatolian hieroglyphsfrequently used short vertical lines to separate words, as didLinear B.In manuscripts, vertical lines were more commonly used for larger breaks, equivalent to the Latin comma and period. This was the case forBiblical Hebrew(thepaseq) and continues with many Indic scripts today (thedanda).

Interpunct, multiple dots, and hypodiastole

arma·virvmqve·cano·troiae·qvi·primvs·ab·oris italiam·fato·profvgvs·laviniaqve·venit litora·mvltvm·ille·et·terris·iactatvs·et·alto vi·svpervm·saevae·memorem·ivnonis·ob·iram

The Latin interpunct

The Ethiopic double interpunct

As noted above, the single and double interpunct were used in manuscripts (on paper) throughout the ancient world. For example, Ethiopic inscriptions used a vertical line, whereas manuscripts used double dots (፡) resembling a colon. The latter practice continues today, though the space is making inroads. Classical Latin used the interpunct in both paper manuscripts and stone inscriptions.Ancient Greek orthographyused between two and five dots as word separators, as well as thehypodiastole.

Different letter forms

In the modernHebrewandArabic Alpha bets,some letters have distinct forms at the ends and/or beginnings of words. This demarcation is used in addition to spacing.

Vertical arrangement

Nastaʿlīq used for Urdu (written right-to-left)

TheNastaʿlīqform ofIslamic calligraphyuses vertical arrangement to separate words. The beginning of each word is written higher than the end of the preceding word, so that a line of text takes on asawtoothappearance. Nastaliq spread from Persia and today is used forPersian,Uyghur,Pashto,andUrdu.

Pause

Infinger spellingand inMorse code,words are separated by a pause.

Unicode

For use with computers, these marks havecodepointsinUnicode:

• U+00B7·MIDDLE DOT(·, ·, ·), a common substitute for:
• U+2E31⸱WORD SEPARATOR MIDDLE DOT
• U+1361፡ETHIOPIC WORDSPACE
• U+10FB჻GEORGIAN PARAGRAPH SEPARATOR
• U+205D⁝TRICOLON
• U+2E12⸒HYPODIASTOLE
• U+2E19⸙PALM BRANCH

InLinear Bscript:

• U+10100𐄀AEGEAN WORD SEPARATOR LINE
• U+10101𐄁AEGEAN WORD SEPARATOR DOT

See also

• Whitespace
• Sentence spacing
• Speech segmentation
• Zero-width non-joiner
• Zero-width space
• Substitute blank
• Underscore

Further reading

• Daniels, Peter T.; Bright, William, eds. (1996).The World's Writing Systems.Oxford University Press.
• Knight, Stan (1996). "The Roman Alphabet". In Daniels, Peter T.; Bright, William (eds.).The World's Writing Systems.Oxford University Press.
• Ritner, Robert (1996). "Egyptian Writing". In Daniels, Peter T.; Bright, William (eds.).The World's Writing Systems.Oxford University Press.
• Saenger, Paul (2000).Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading.Stanford University Press.ISBN0-8047-4016-X.
• Wingo, E. Otha (1972).Latin Punctuation in the Classical Age.Mouton. p.16.