Chinese punctuation

Chinese punctuation uses a different set of punctuation marks from European languages, although the concept of punctuation was adapted in the written language during the 20th century from Western punctuation marks. Before that, the concept of punctuation in Eastern Asian cultures did not exist at all. The first book to be printed with modern punctuation was Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy (中國哲學史大綱) by Hu Shi (胡適), published in 1919. Scholars did, however, annotate texts with symbols resembling the modern '。' and '、' (see below) to indicate full-stops and pauses, respectively. Traditional poetry and calligraphy maintains the punctuation-free style. The usage of punctuation is regulated by the Chinese national standard GB/T 15834–2011 "General rules for punctuation" Chinese: 标点符号用法; pinyin: biāodiǎn fúhào yòngfǎ.

Shape of punctuation marks

Ancient Chinese books contain thousands of words with no spaces between them. In Chinese writing, each character conforms to a roughly square frame so that the text as a whole can fit into a grid. Because of this, East Asian punctuation marks are larger than their European counterparts, as they should occupy a square area that is the same size as the characters around them. These punctuation marks are called fullwidth to contrast them from halfwidth European punctuation marks.