Did there be punctuation in ancient China? The ancients said what punctuation marks to use at the ba

In ancient times, there was none, and usually what we watched in TV series or movies was a lie. Modern punctuation has its origins in the West.

Punctuation marks in ancient China are generally summarized simply as "sentence reading". sentences, such as " " equivalent to the full stop used today, there are large, medium and small; Pronounced (pronounced dòu), marked with a comma as "equivalent to today's comma." In fact, in the long history of the development of Chinese civilization, the punctuation marks used by the predecessors are by no means more than these two, but after all, they have not been developed into a unified and standardized system in an orderly manner, and even the division of labor between the two symbols of "sentence and reading" is not fixed, or even may not be used.

Modern Chinese, if they are not specially trained and pick up ancient books that have not been punctuated by modern times, even if they can read with reference books, it is difficult to pass the "sentence breaking" level, and the problem lies in the lack or too little punctuation.

Hu Shi's article "On Sentence Reading and Character Symbols" published in 1916 is the first systematic and complete science of China's new punctuation marks, and the main historical contributions of this article are: The preliminary idea of dividing the two systems of sentence reading symbols (dots) and text symbols (markings) is proposed; clarified the importance of punctuation in the written language; A relatively complete symbology system was developed; Analyze the use of various types of punctuation; The relationship between sentences, reading, and pauses was sorted out. In 1919, six scholars headed by Hu Shi jointly submitted the "Proposal for the Issuance of New Punctuation Marks" to the Preparatory Committee for the Unification of the Chinese Language, which was approved by the Ministry of Education in 1920 and became the first punctuation scheme promulgated by the Ministry of Education in China.

There should also be, but it is different from today, otherwise how to break the sentence.

Nowadays, many people mistakenly think that the ancient Chinese did not use "punctuation marks" because the Qing Dynasty officially presided over the compilation of the "Siku Quanshu", and removed the original "punctuation marks" in China. Qing literati also no longer used "punctuation" when writing articles or publishing books, until modern new punctuation marks were produced.

In fact, the "comma, period, parentheses, and ton" used today have been produced in the Han Dynasty, and Xu Shen's "Shuowen Jiezi" in the Eastern Han Dynasty interprets "ton" as "there is an end, and there is also knowledge". Interpret "expansion ()" as "hook recognition also." ”

Archaeological findings show that in addition to the symbol "=" in the Juyan Han Jian, there are also symbols such as "w" and "卩", which all play the role of sentence reading or later punctuation. For example: Han Jian "Swallow North Tunnel Pawn Tian Yun (this is a Zhu pen symbol) New Year Moon Eclipse Three Hu New Year Gengxu Self-Pick = 卩"; "Pingwu lost the goods and lost the fire has been fired" in the 27th square of the broken city, there are "three right twenty-ninth tunnel pawns", and thirty right pawns"; "Slant Rong Wang Yang Lu Shang Han Shou" and so on.

These special symbols in the Chinese Simplified Chinese have their own special uses, some of them play the role of later, such as " and some play, such as " and " and so on; Some play the role of a full stop, such as "卩"; Some play the role of identifying the front of the chapter or the branch and the paragraph, such as the "w", "and other symbols" placed at the beginning of the text; Some symbols, such as "s", "=", etc., are not yet yet able to determine exactly what their role is in the text; Some of them are used in conjunction with two symbols, and some symbols such as "w" are placed at the end of the text, and they are deliberately used in Zhu handwriting to indicate their particularity when copying or writing.

By the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties, the use of "punctuation" had been relatively standardized.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the original punctuation marks were studied and sorted out many times, and a total of 16 kinds of punctuation marks were listed, including commas, periods, parentheses, pauses, semicolons, quotation marks, colons, question marks, exclamation marks, dashes, ellipses, conjunctions, spacers, proper names, book titles, and accents.

It is often said that "punctuation should be followed by a colon"; It usually indicates a pause after the prompt or indicates a prompt below or in general.

The role of the colon:

It is used after the salutation to indicate the following. For example: "Comrades: now we have a meeting. It often appears in letters and official documents. Some people often ignore the colon after the salutation and tend to write it as a comma.

It is used after the words "say", "think", "is", "prove", "announce", "for example", "as follows", etc., to indicate the following. The role of the colon:

1. After the salutation used in letters and speeches, it means that the following is mentioned.

2. It is used after the speaker's name in the records of interviews, debates, discussions, court hearings, etc., to elicit the content of the speech.

3. After the use of suggestive words, it means mentioning the following.

Fourth, it is used to lead to sub-statements after the general discourse.

In ancient times, there were only symbols for pauses in sentences and sentences, and there were no punctuation marks in the real sense.

Around the Han Dynasty, sentence reading was used, but that was only a pause, not yet punctuation. A large pause that is roughly the end of the semantic meaning is called a "sentence", and a pause that requires a slight pause before the semantic end is called a "reading". In the Song Dynasty, circle points began to be used.

Use a circle where it's a full stop and a dot where it's a comma. In the Ming Dynasty, and , it was used to indicate the name of a person and a place, respectively. These simple symbols can be seen as traditional punctuation marks in our country; But it is very incomplete and has not been widely used for a long time.

In the 20th century, the use of modern vernacular was becoming more and more extensive, and there was an urgent need for a relatively complete new punctuation mark. Some scholars began to introduce some of the most common punctuation marks in Europe and the United States to China, and based on the ancient sentence reading symbols, with reference to Western methods, they formulated the earliest new punctuation marks in China that are suitable for the needs of Chinese characters.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the relevant parties studied and sorted out the original punctuation, and in September 1951, the People's Publishing Office published the "Punctuation Usage". There are 14 kinds of punctuation marks, including periods, commas, pauses, semicolons, quotation marks, colons, question marks, exclamation marks, parentheses, dashes, ellipsis, proper names, book titles, and emphasis.

In ancient Chinese texts, there are generally no punctuation marks, and sentence breaks can only be completed by human experience (add "sentence reading symbols" to the article: the full stop looks like the current full stop, indicating the end of the sentence; The reading number looks like the current pause, indicating a pause in tone), often ambiguous, resulting in misunderstanding of the words and sentences of the article; For example, in the Qing dynasty Zhao Tianyang's "Revised Interpretation of the New Collection of Interpreters", there are seven ways to interpret the sentence "Stay a guest on a rainy day and leave me without a stay" (another says that I am a guest, not me).

But in fact, there have been punctuation marks in China since the pre-Qin period, which can be seen in archaeological artifacts from the 20th century onwards, but there is no unified standard for these symbols. For example, in the bamboo slips of the Warring States period, you can see the " " type symbol, which usually indicates the end of an article; Another example is the "" function is a combination of modern commas and periods, which are used to indicate sentence breaks. In fact, as far back as the era of oracle bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions, there was already a rather peculiar punctuation in China.

Xu Shen of the Han Dynasty included punctuation marks in "Shuowen Jie Zi", and received the "number," which was extinct and recognized. "I also received the "() number," and "I also recognized the hook." "So ancient China just didn't have modern punctuation, not without punctuation.

The first person to introduce punctuation from abroad was Zhang Deyi, a student of Tongwenguan in the late Qing Dynasty.

Between 1868 and 1869 he completed the Retelling of StrangeAlthough Zhang Deyi did not consciously introduce punctuation marks to the domestic intellectual circles, and even had a tone of opposition, feeling that these punctuation marks were cumbersome, he brought a new wind to the development of Chinese and Chinese dialect symbols in the process of unintentionally planting willows.

In April 1919, six professors, Hu Shi, Qian Xuantong, Liu Fu, Zhu Xizu, Zhou Zuoren, and Ma Yuzao, put forward the "Request for the Promulgation of a New Style of Punctuation Motion" at the first meeting of the Preparatory Committee for the Unification of the Chinese Language, requesting the promulgation of ** and the promulgation of the passage".and other punctuation.

On February 2, 1920, the Ministry of Education of Beiyang ** issued Instruction No. 53 - "General Order Adopts New Punctuation Text", and China's first set of legal new punctuation marks was born.

In 1920, with the support of Chen Duxiu, Hu Shi and others, Wang Yuan, who ran a small publishing house in Shanghai, punctuated, segmented and published Water Margin, which was the first time that a classical book was published using punctuation marks in China. The use of punctuation marks has played a great role in the promotion and use of Chinese vernacular.