Languages Thursdays: Punctuation Hell
Written by Julen Madariaga on April 23rd, 2010
Today I just wanted to comment on the mysterious world of Chinese punctuation. It is a fascinating field in these times when everyone accuses Chinese of discriminating against our foreign symbols. In fact, there is a kind of foreign symbols that are used in practically every sentence of modern Chinese: the points, the commas, and all the rest of punctuation signs.
As is natural in any language, when the Chinese decided to adopt these signs to clarify their script, they set their own rules for using them. There are many examples of punctuation marks that are apparently identical in Chinese and in Western languages but in fact have different meanings and uses. This is not the main point of the post, but I will stop slightly on one of the example that I think is fun.
The sighing mark
For some reason the (!) that is known in the West as exclamation mark got translated in to Chinese as 叹号, that is, the 叹 mark. This 叹 character is most commonly used today in expressions like 叹气, and its meaning is closer to sigh or acclaim than to exclaim. My theory is this is the reason behind that quirk of the Chinese netizens who write “!” marks on every second sentence.
I have seen from experience that many Westerners find this habit annoying, or even consider it immature. I can see where they are coming from, but they should bear in mind that “!” does not mean the same thing in Chinese as in English. I you don’t believe me, check a professional format letter in Chinese. Both the introductory and the final formulas are normally followed by “!”. Believe it or not, when you write to a client in Chinese you start the letter with “Respected Mr. Client !” and end it with “Regards !”
Similarly to the Chinese readers I would advise to moderate the use of “!” when they write in English, as it is usually not well understood. Sometimes I receive emails! Written just like this! you know it’s crazy! But please don’t do that anymore! because in English that sign is not like just sighing! It is exclaiming! which means shouting!! at your friend’s face!!!
Back to the main point: The HELL of punctuation
After this little anecdote with “!”, I am back to the main subject. As we said, the fact that a language adapts foreign loans to its own needs is perfectly natural. The problem comes when the speakers of that language are not consistent with their own rules, or they just ignore them or even sabotage them on purpose.
I am completely serious when I say that the Chinese people have a secret plan to annihilate all the punctuation marks. Any foreigner who reads regularly in Chinese realizes that the use of punctuation is lax, leading to ambiguous phrases, and requiring extreme mental processing power to parse the endless strings of characters.
But let me give you three particular examples of this Chinese conspiracy:
The Commas (,) – These symbols are so important to help us understand long phrases, especially in contextual languages like Chinese. It is not easy to use them perfectly, I do mistakes in English as well. But what I have seen in Chinese is beyond belief. From those who write a whole paragraph without a comma, to others who use periods compulsively instead of commas, to foreign educated colleagues who just place the commas following English rules. Are they no rules in Chinese, or is this aspect not emphasized in school education? I have my own theory about this, but more in conclusions below.
The Dialogs – I noticed this problem recently as I am writing my first piece of fiction in Chinese (I will be publishing it very soon). When I was doing the dialogs, I checked the internet to see what is the standard in Chinese novels [1]. To my dismay, after opening a handful of different novels on online literature sites, I realized there is no common standard, every writer represents dialog differently. Worse still, a good number of writers don’t even punctuate at all, just marking every dialog line with a “he/she said:” to show it is dialog.
The Spaces - But of all the problems with Chinese punctuation, I think the worst by far is the one single punctuation mark that does not exist. It is an essential mark, the most important of all and by far the most used in the West. We usually ignore it as it is taken for granted, but we would have a hard time to read anything without it. I am speaking of the Space separating words. As absurd as it might sound, this device was not in the package of punctuation signs that the Chinese imported into their language, and this is probably the single most difficult hurdle of Chinese punctuation. Welcome to the Wall of Characters.
Conclusions
I have been thinking a lot about these problems with the Chinese punctuation, and I have come to the following explanations:
1- Following in the age-old tradition of Chinese scholars, the modern day Chinese draw a secret pleasure from making their written language as cryptic and unfathomable as is humanly possible.
2- The Chinese education system does not emphasize the importance of punctuation, either because it follows in the tradition of point 1, or because it despises those pesky symbols that are so foreign.
3- More interestingly, I have a budding theory that might explain this and some other peculiarities of the Chinese written language. It has to do with the different way that native Chinese read and parse their written language, which might explain that they actually don’t need the punctuation signs as much as we do.
This point is also tied to the similar problems observed in Chinese document formatting and typesetting. Unfortunately, I will not be able to continue today, because the time is running out and because I am not still 100% sure of where I am getting or where I can get.
We will leave this mystery for next Thursday Language. In the meantime any suggestions/corrections are sincerely appreciated.
NOTES:
- to English speakers, note that the American and British standards for dialogues using “” and , are far from international standard. Check a typical Spanish novel to see what I mean [↩]
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So… I’m a fan of ‘chat with a stranger’ online sites… It’s like being on a subway full of people from across the globe… Just pick a seat and start up a conversation……
There’s this pattern of usage of ellipses which I associate with East Asians which has always bemused me… which amounts to eschewing all punctuation except for strings of three dots…
Sometimes you have to do it twice in a row for full effect……
I’ve chatted with some very intelligent seeming young people who nevertheless see nothing wrong with their punctuation… and claim that everyone they know types this way… Can anyone confirm / deny this trend………
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This is what I learn from my teacher: To represent a dialog ,put a comma at where the dialog started, followed by a left quotation mark, then the content of the dialog, (including the last full stop!) then the right quotation mark, job done! Something more tricky: how to represent a dialog within another dialog?
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Julen Madariaga Reply:
April 23rd, 2010 at 5:01 pm
@Sijia Chen: This sounds to me like the standard in English novels. Other languages use completely different systems.
Anyway, no problem with that. The problem is: WTF does nobody use proper dialog marking? Out of 10 novels in tianya books, I couldn’t find 2 of them with the same system. Many of them don’t even use the “” or other marker for direct speech, so they are forced to introduce the phrase 他说： 他说： 他说： a thousand times…
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Sijia Chen Reply:
April 23rd, 2010 at 5:12 pm
@Julen Madariaga, As far as I am concerned, the standards in both languages(Chinese and English) are exactly the same, I learned to format my dialog in this way long before I knew any English.
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Julen Madariaga Reply:
April 23rd, 2010 at 7:03 pm
OK, good to know. I will stick to that in my story then
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Sija: an explanation of nested quotes can be found here.
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Julen Madariaga Reply:
April 23rd, 2010 at 5:04 pm
@nick: that is for English language, not for Chinese (unless the standard for Chinese is to follow English practice, which could very well be.)
Anyone has a link to Chinese punctuation norms or a style guide? I am sure it exists for Xinhua and all those guys.
Yet, the problem in my post is not whether it exists or not, but rather: Why doesn’t anyone follow it!!
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Wow, I’d love to read it!
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Julen Madariaga Reply:
April 23rd, 2010 at 5:10 pm
@rui: thanks. I think I will release it over the weekend or latest Monday. It is a little drama, including silly laowais, love, girlfriend’s parents, and a lot lot lot of misunderstandings … I hope it is funny.
My intention is to post it on Tianya BBS with a 标题党 eye-catching title, see if I can get some thousand views, I hope you guys click over there to give it lots of 顶 when the time comes (I will announce it here).
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When I read about Chinese punctuation, I always think about a quote I read (I can find it here for example http://news.xinhuanet.com/edu/2009-08/18/content_11900412.htm , but I don’t remember if it was the exact article I read) :
“中学的时候，最不喜欢的就是鲁迅的文章，半文言半白话，又拗口，还经常是连标点符号都要背下来，太痛苦了。”
It is by a student that now hates Lǔ Xùn in part because he had to learn whole texts by heart, including the idiosyncratic use of punctuation. I am quite sure punctuation is associated by a lot of young people with something boring that only teachers care about. A lot of French authors had very personal use of punctuation, but no teacher would actually think forcing students to learn it is useful.
If you want to continue on this topic, I am interested by the difference between full-space punctuation and half-space punctuation. In some books, commas take a whole character sized space, while in others it is half.
By the way (and maybe related), how are you supposed to deal with punctuation that would be on the first character of the next line ? I saw it stick out at the end of the line, or the whole line compressed a little to make room to the punctuation sign.
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Julen Madariaga Reply:
April 23rd, 2010 at 5:15 pm
@Jean: Check the wikipedia article for some info on teh single and double.
I am also very interested in this subject, it is in the middle between 2 aspects that I am writing: 1-punctuation and 2-typesetting, both of them are very peculiar in Chinese.
Next Thursday I will probably be speaking about this point 2, so will touch on the simple/double thing. The title of the post I can tell you already: Typesetting and formatting in Chinese is HELL (from a Western POV at least
)
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What about the two different commas in Chinese punctuation?
They have the one we are used to ,
and another one too 、
plus strange things like this 「色」
and the period looks different 。
For more on Chinese punctuation, see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_punctuation
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Julen Madariaga Reply:
April 23rd, 2010 at 5:24 pm
@Nicki: Thanks for the link, I checked that as well.
You are right, the period looks different, but it is used mostly in the same way as in English. The forward comma is mostly used for enumerations, it is very easy to use and in fact it is useful to avoid ambiguity in some cases.
In fact the rules look reasonable enough to me, I just wonder why nobody uses them!
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I am one of those East Asians who use … a lot when I chat… I write complete sentences when I draft serious documents. But when I am casually chatting, my thoughts don’t punctuate, one sort of flows into another so I can’t really use formal punctuation marks. And “…” sort of ties my string of thoughts together.
“I have seen from experience that many Westerners find this habit [of using excessive !s] annoying, or even consider it immature.” Come on, stop being oh so sensitive. So what if they use !!!s a lot, it’s their language after all. One thing that annoys me about many Westerners is that they are so judgmental toward the Chinese. Who is to say it’s immature using lots of !!s. Maybe it’s normal, it’s fine, maybe the western punctuation system is weird and abnormal. Present tense, past tense, singular, plural… so annoying. And how come there is no plural for shrimp or sheep? And the plural for medium is media? Totally weird.
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Julen Madariaga Reply:
April 23rd, 2010 at 7:01 pm
LOL. Cathy I think you are right, you should never listen to people who tell you how you should write. Especially Westerners, they tend to be particularly arrogant about language.
On the other hand, it makes sense to try to use punctuation properly, at least in professional situations. It is not a matter of English grammar being superior to Chinese. It is just that if you are writing in a language, you should try to follow the grammar and words of that language, right?
I give you an example, in French we say “bonjour” and “salut” when we meet someone. But if I come to China I cannot say 笨猪 and 傻驴 when I meet a Chinese, or else he might not be so happy!! So it is the same: be careful because English (!) just does not mean the same as the Chinese (!)
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mic Reply:
April 24th, 2010 at 3:32 am
@Julen Madariaga,
let me start by saying that if you want some standard use of the Chinese punctuation, you should never go to tianya but instead might be better off looking for some classical Chinese literature that’s actually printed out. this is perhaps true for all languages as we know as common sense that internet languages are perhaps the farthest from being standard.
secondly, the confusion regarding Chinese punctuation, as you rightly mentioned, is partly because it is a partial attempt to Romanize the Chinese. many of the Chinese language reformers at that time were subject to Western supremacy. and among all biases of the west towards the east, language supremacy might be the one most persistent and hidden. to see some ‘real’ confusion or perhaps ‘unnecessary’ complications that Romanization has done to an Eastern language, one only needs to look at the Japanese.
i loled at the examples of “bonjour” 笨猪 and “salut” 傻驴.
however, i suspect that that is exactly your problem with the Chinese punctuation. it’s as if you were saying “笨猪” to a non-mandarin-speaking French who took it as “bonjour.” only in this case, you are using the Chinese punctuation while thinking English, whereas the Chinese are not aware of the latter.
the “!!!” example is a good symbol for your reaction. how much are you exaggerating the punctuation problem? of all the confusions you had with the Chinese, how many cases were caused by punctuation? just like some Chinese would tend to ‘overuse’ “!” (the statement is only true from a Western perspective, and even then, that would be an statement short of a scientific study based upon proper sampling), are you overemphasizing a few of the inconveniences (to say the most)?
when in Rome, do as the Romans do. even the linguists/anthropologists would only strive to understand a native language from the natives’ perspective. plus, it is naive to think of the language as 1)rational 2)systematic/consistent 3)desiring standardization or possible of being standardized, and perhaps more importantly 4) that if fulfilling 1) 2) & 3), the language can still prevail throughout history. such thinking prioritize a dead and meaningless structure over lively daily usage, and a restrictive tradition over potentials for changes/adaptations (not necessarily all for better, the Chinese punctuation being one with controversies). proponents of such thinking are running after the never-existent perfect but abstract notion of the Platonian ‘bed’ over all real forms of beds.
the modernist thinking of language starting from Saussure has long been deconstructed by postmodernists like Derrida. people need to live with the ‘confusions’ of languages and let go the unrealistic wish that they should/would make perfect sense. people need to realize that perhaps it is exactly because of the confusion/accommodation/tolerance that some languages can prevail when other counterparts have long disappeared.
i appreciate your cross-cultural attempt, but it’s not really ‘cross’-cultural until you get a firm grasp on the other. my western professor always tells me that it is good to be critical, but only after you have been understanding. if one finds the (lax use of) Chinese punctuation confusing while most Chinese seem to be fine with it and even the Chinese authorities are not intervening as language police, one is better off holding one’s doubt/critique a bit longer.
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Cathy Reply:
April 24th, 2010 at 5:55 am
“if one finds the (lax use of) Chinese punctuation confusing while most Chinese seem to be fine with it and even the Chinese authorities are not intervening as language police, one is better off holding one’s doubt/critique a bit longer.”
This is the point I was trying to make with my comment, not English is better than Chinese or vice versa. After thinking about this a little, I’ve come to the conclusion that the purpose of punctuation in Chinese is somewhat different from English. On top of that English is a much more rule based language whereas Chinese does not have strict grammatical rules, it is much less structured. For example, in English, we use “.” only when a complete sentence is formed (I still remember my English teacher marking up my run on sentences). In Chinese, the period (the little circle) is used more liberally, when a thought, not necessrily a sentence, is finished. Also, like the commenter above, I checked some Chinese classical literature, it seems to me, the Chinese use commas and other punctuations to parallel how they would recite a passage, commas are used where they would pause, exclamation marks used for emphasis rather than to shout at people, and when a thought is finished, they use period.
This discussion also reminded me of James Joyce’s Ulysseus and its famous last chapter where Joyce barely used any punctuation marks. Perhaps like Joyce’s Ulysseus, the Chinese are just ahead of our punctuation times
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Julen Madariaga Reply:
April 26th, 2010 at 12:29 am
@Cathy:
Really, is it easy for you to understand a long text in Chinese without any commas? Don’t the commas help you to parse the sentences easier? I thought precisely because Chinese grammar is so understated, so commas were even more necessary.
I am very interested in this. Any other Chinese reader here agrees with Cathy, do you find Chinese without commas as easy to read as with commas?
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Cathy Reply:
April 26th, 2010 at 5:43 am
@Julen Madariaga, I don’t think we are talking about the same thing. I am not saying they should all write like Joyce. It’s just that from what I have read in Chinese, I simply haven’t noticed a punctuation problem reaching epidemic proportions. If the Chinese are so bad at punctuation that the meaning of their writing is distorted, I am sure they have an internal correction mechanism. Otherwise, how do they communicate? So I am saying perhaps it’s best to give them the benefit of the doubt. Because if the Chinese themselves are fine with the way things are, it must be working.
My parents were educated in China and they told me they were taught the proper use of punctuation. They read much more in Chinese and when I asked them, they said they haven’t noticed any serious problems with punctuation in Chinese writing.
Julen Madariaga Reply:
April 26th, 2010 at 12:23 am
@mic, Thanks for the long comment.
First of all, the reason why I was checking on Tianya is because I was writing from the office, so I didn’t have my books. Now I am at home and I check 3 books that are on my table right now: 围城 a school edition from year 82, 三重门 the famouos Han Han book, and a Luxun’s 呐喊。Well, there is not a single one of them that is the same standard for dialogs!!
Some use the “,” format like English. Some use 说: without commas, etc. And most of them don’t even open a new line for the dialogs. etc. There is an important reason why the 说： standard is not very good, it is because it doesn’t allow for a good dialog rythm, as you are forced to introduced the 说: beforeeach line, never after. I have only written around 2 pages of dialog and I found it very rigid.
Anyway, thanks for your insights. I just want to make clear that I am not judging the Chinese. I just feel very curious about things that are done differently here than in my own country (like the !!! example). I enjoy observing these differences and sharing them with others.
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mic Reply:
April 29th, 2010 at 2:10 am
@Julen Madariaga,
1. let me just say that i enjoy your observation of cross-cultural differences. you blog struck me as open-minded and quite critical of mainstream western (& Chinese, hehe~) perspective(s). i appreciate that you are sharing your thoughts here and felt like joining your conversation on this particular one, that was it:-)
2. imo, you might be better of dropping the 3 books. i am no expert in Chinese modern literature, but none of the writers are mainstream in terms of literary/grammar tradition. qian zhongshu is more of a cross-cultural writer. lu xun is a proponent for baihua, which was greatly influenced by the romanization of the Chinese. han han, you probably know more about him than i do. anyway, i just think that the first two were living during a time when standardization of punctuation was standardized (not that it has ever been as ‘standardized’ as its western counterparts). i have no recommendations but i assume someone in the 70s or 80s might be better? you might also want to check some mainstream literary magazines such as 收获? i have to say that i haven’t read any for more than 10yrs now, but just my 0.02.
3. like Cathy has mentioned, i do not think punctuation is a big problem for Chinese. they have managed to record their thousands of years of history without much confusion with no punctuation at all. that was why i thought it might be your western thinking that led you to this post. but that might not necessarily be a critique. an outsider’s perspective can always be useful according to lu xun’s 拿来主义:-)
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mic Reply:
April 29th, 2010 at 2:14 am
sorry, i meant qian zhongshu and lu xun were living long before the standardization of punctuation.
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There is no such thing as dialogs!
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Oh dear, is that a grammar nazi on my blog?
Excuse me sir, but there is no such a thing as saminsams!
You should know that, as an international citizen with no links with either the US or the UK, it is my policy to use both varieties of English without distinction. Do you have any good reason why I shouldn’t?
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And Chinese punctuation in Taiwan… is also different (in its use). One thing seldom seen in Chinese, the semi-colon ;
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@Cathy - I see what you mean. And yes, I guess you are right there is no big problem with Chinese punctuation, since people understand each other just fine. The situation is not as bad as you might imagine reading this post, it is just that it is less standardized than in the West, and it might have a certain impact.
I think the main observation I have is that people care less here about things like punctuation, document formatting, typesetting, etc. for a series of reasons. This is really obvious when you work with a Chinese office assistant (and I have worked with quite a few different ones).
Even if the problem is not “big”, as you say, it might be related to other problems that are important. Such as the very little reading for pleasure that I see in China (what books they read seem to be mostly self-improvement or educational). OK, this is jumping way too fast to the conclusions, let’s not discuss it just now. All I mean to say is small problems may sometimes be a sign of bigger problems.
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I think the best way to learn Chinese punctuation is by looking at how native Chinese speakers use commas in English, they kind of bind sub-sentences together like this as long as it belongs to the same sub-topic, it sounds strange in English but not Chinese, you know what I mean.
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@ Julen
Some use the “,” format like English. Some use 说: without commas, etc. And most of them don’t even open a new line for the dialogs. etc. There is an important reason why the 说： standard is not very good, it is because it doesn’t allow for a good dialog rythm, as you are forced to introduced the 说: beforeeach line, never after. I have only written around 2 pages of dialog and I found it very rigid.
When I read that, I was honestly taken aback. I have never ever thought that the 说 before the dialogue was unnatural, though of course, when I translated it to English or French, it felt a little so. Mind you, I would hazard to say that having 说 after the dialogue would feel awkward, at least at first. And personally, I don’t really mind not having a new line for each dialogue; the use of 说 is really just a convention-isn’t it a little similar when reading a play?
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Julen Madariaga Reply:
April 29th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
@dlszho: I suppose you haven’t read all the thread (understandable). The point was not whether Chinese punctuation rules are better or worse, the point is that nobody follows those rules!
In particular regarding dialogs, there are the following additional problems:
1- Not starting a new line for dialog is not only harder to read (OK this is subjective) but more critically it forces you to add unnecessary “他说”s all over the place as you lack a clear marker of when a new person speaks.
2- More importantly, to be forced to do the ”他说“ in the beginning of each line is inherently rigid. It means that you cannot play with the rhythm, ellipses etc. For example you cannot do:
“Oh my God!,”she scratched her ass as she hung down from the apple tree, “I can’t believe you said that!”
“Yes, my dear, I love you”
etc. etc.
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The “space”, in fact, is perhaps the only punctuation mark in classical chinese, and therefore the only one to kind of make it into modern chinese. It has and had a very specific function, the ultimate signal of respect available in the language, leaving a space blank, not writing a character, and I have little doubt this has influence the “missing space” in modern chinese punctuation. There are plenty of resources/books out there that elucidate punctuation usage. Standards and usages very, as I’m sure is the case with other languages (English certainly is that way).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai_tou
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Julen Madariaga Reply:
May 3rd, 2010 at 10:43 pm
@transliterationisms, that is really interesting, thanks for the info.
But I need to clarify: I was not referring to that kind of space! I was referring to the space that does NOT exist in Chinese, ie. the space that separates different words in our alphabetic script. The same sign that I have used more than 50 times in this single comment!
This is probably the single characteristic of Chinese punctuation that makes it most difficult to parse. Much more than the usage or not of commas.
UPDATE: spaces separating words are considered a part of punctuation. Momentarily I had a doubt, but I have just checked it, that is why I erased the last bit of the comment.
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Julen Madariaga Reply:
May 4th, 2010 at 12:11 am
@Regarding standards, yes I am sure there are loads of books about them, there might be a whole library for all I know, but all that is pointless if people don’t use them.
I see a lot more variance in Chinese than I see in English. In fact, English punctuation is a very well established. The fact that people would even care to discuss minute differences like the Oxford comma says a lot about this.
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As I understand it (I may be wrong), the 叹 in 叹号 is short for 感叹, as in 感叹词, but while 感叹 means to sigh, 感叹词 is the grammatical term for “interjection” as a part of speech. So 叹号 doesn’t have anything to do with sighing in particular, but more with interjections in general.
My understanding comes from Chinese English teachers who work in my school; when I talk about ! or interjections, this is how they translate them.
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Julen Madariaga Reply:
May 3rd, 2010 at 11:47 pm
Good observation. You could make it even simpler by saying that “叹号” means “exclamation mark”, so that’s that.
My point was that when people think of “叹”，this character is more commonly associated to the sense of sighing than to the sense of exclaiming. Even so, I don’t really take very seriously my little “theory” that (!) usage is due to a mistranslation, I proposed that idea partly for its humorous side.
There is not necessarily a logical explanation behind this usage, it just happens that many words and signs are used differently in different languages, for whichever reason. I wonder if the communist habit of finishing all their political slogans with (!) has something to do with it.
In any case, I have no doubt that the (!) in mainland China is different in meaning and usage than the same sign in English.
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IMHO language (incl punctuation) reflects the person who uses it (who said: “show me your text and I’ll tell you who you are?”). Case in point; I’ve been in China for many years and have yet to meet anybody who both knows the rules (about anything; language, traffic, whatever) and follows them. Furthermore, you can see lots of excited, bouncy, smiley young people in hello kitty outfits who -surprise surprise- talk and write using bouncy !!!!….:) and ignore stuffy old waiguoren’s Gesetze about what should go ~~where… and!!! when…?!! OMG!!!:):):)
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