User:Pelagic/sandbox/punctuation

Arabic Punctuation

The usage advocated on these pages is very similar to that in English. Discussed are period (.), comma (،), semicolon (؛), colon (:), exclamation mark (!), question mark (؟), dash (–), ellipsis (...), round brackets (), square brackets [] and quotes " ".

Comma and semicolon are turned, and question mark is mirrored. An interesting item is the "continuation mark", a double dash that looks like an equals sign (=), said to be used for continuing a footnote from one page to the next.

Babelpad reveals that the expected characters were used for comma, semicolon, and question (، U+060C ARABIC COMMA – ؛ U+061B ARABIC SEMICOLON – ؟ U+061F ARABIC QUESTION MARK). The dash shows as a hyphen-minus when pasted, its extra length in the originals might be a feature of the Arabic fonts used. Similarly, standard western/ASCII code points seem to be used for the other puncts ( . : ! = ).

Note the use of European digits for numbered points; and alif, bet, gimel, dalet, etc. equivalent to our a, b, c, d lettering for sub-items. Whereas we would use

1. a point,

2) brackets

a) one bracket,

(b) or two brackets

to separate the numbering from the content, they use dashes.

1– point one

a– sub-point

b– sub-point

2– point two

– sub-point

In one document, use of naked dashes as bullets for sub-items is discussed; round bullets (•) are also used but not discussed.

The list of misuses at almeshkat is telling. For example the use of U+0660 ARABIC-INDIC DIGIT ZERO (٠) instead of U+2022 BULLET (•).

To Do: look at Crown Letters and Punctuation and Their Placements and http://www.scribd.com/doc/207119358/%D8%AD%D8%B1%D9%88%D9%81-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D8%A7%D8%AC-%D9%88-%D8%B9%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D8%B1%D9%82%D9%8A%D9%85

Note, for example, the use of curly quotes and non-mirrored question mark.