The origin of punctuation marks!

The history of no punctuation marks in ancient China - -

On February 2, 1920, the Beiyang *** Ministry of Education issued Order No. 53 - "General Order to Adopt New Punctuation Marks" ", approved the "Request for the Promulgation of a New Punctuation Mark Plan" jointly proposed by six professors from Peking University.

The first set of legal new punctuation marks in my country was born, which became a record worth recording in the history of language and culture development.

In April 1919, six professors, headed by Hu Shi and including Qian Xuantong, Liu Fu, Zhu Xizu, Zhou Zuoren, and Ma Yuzao, were extremely unwilling to look at "current newspapers, books, whatever This kind of article is full of dense circles, not only does it not mention the difference in grammar, it even loses the meaning of appreciation."

At the first meeting of the Preparatory Committee for the Unification of the Mandarin Language, they proposed the "Plan" and asked *** to promulgate and adopt it.

;: ? ——() "" and other punctuation marks.

At the end of November, Hu Shi revised the above plan and renamed the symbols listed in the original plan "New Punctuation Marks", which was approved this year.

In ancient times, punctuation often made jokes

Punctuation marks may look small, but they play a very important role in written language communication.

The punctuation marks we use now have their ancestors in Europe.

Although the concept of punctuation marks had already appeared in China before the Han Dynasty, such as "Li Jing Dian Zhi", that is, writing one or two words between two sentences, or using vertical lines, short horizontal lines, etc. to mark The completion of a sentence, but its use is not common, and it often appears in jokes of one kind or another.

"Han Feizi?" Foreign Reserve said lower left? "Shuo Er" records such a story: Duke Ai asked Confucius: "I heard that Kui has one foot, do you believe it?" He said: "Kui, a human being, why has one foot? There is no other difference between them, and they are unique in sound. < /p>

Yao said: 'Kui is enough,'

'It makes you happy.

Therefore, the gentleman said: 'Kui is enough,' but there is no one. Foot.

"It is said that Duke Ai of Lu thought it was strange because he heard that "Kui" had one foot, so he asked Confucius.

Confucius told him that Kui was a music official who was proficient in music during the Yao period and made great contributions to the implementation of music education in the world. After Shun succeeded to the throne, he wanted to find someone else to be a music official, and Yao appointed him. Shun was advised that one person like Kui is enough.

It happened that Duke Ai of Lu did not know how to read ancient books, so he misunderstood Kui as a monster with one foot, which made the king inevitably laugh.

During the Han Dynasty, there was "sentence reading" as a pause mark, similar to our today's sentence breaking.

There are two types of symbols: "↓" and ",". For example, "Shuowen Jiezi" explains that "↓" means "Hook Shiye, Juyueqie", "," means "Something" To stop, but to recognize it, is the master of Yu Qie."

That is to say, any place where you can stop at the end of the text is marked with "↓". If there is a place in the text that can be read as a sentence, it is marked with ",", which are today's periods and commas.

In the Song Dynasty, the hooks became circles, and the marks were shaped like "○", which were divided into large, medium and small.

When Zhu Xi wrote "Collected Commentary on Chapters and Sentences of the Four Books", he used a big "○" before each chapter and "○" after each sentence.

"Paragraph numbers also appeared during this period. Expressed with "∨" or "∧", it is drawn in the lower right corner of the word at the end of each paragraph, and even "" appears.

""..." Such dense circles and dots are added to To the right of the word, emphasize the exciting part of the sentence.

This usage was still used until the 1920s.

The "＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿" placed next to a person's name or place name appeared as late as the Ming Dynasty.

However, it is worth noting that ancient punctuation marks were mostly used to express pauses, without much difference in meaning, and most books have no punctuation.

Students from Tongwen Hall introduced new punctuation

After the Opium War, new ideas were introduced, and Western punctuation also followed.

The first person to introduce punctuation marks from abroad was Zhang Deyi, a student at Tongwen Hall in the late Qing Dynasty.

Tongwen Museum was established by the Qing government during the Westernization Movement to cultivate foreign language talents. Zhang Deyi was one of the first batch of English class students.

In February of the seventh year of Tongzhi (1868), Pu Anchen, the retired minister to China, led the "Chinese Mission" to visit Europe and the United States, and Zhang Deyi also became one of the accompanying personnel.

Zhang Deyi had a habit of recording the local scenery, famous objects, customs and habits no matter which country he visited, and compiled them into booklets under the title of "Storing Strange Things".

During the period from 1868 to 1869, he completed "Restatement of Strangeness".

This book is now called "Travel in Europe and America". There is a paragraph introducing Western punctuation, saying: "Books from European and Western countries, the sentences are outlined and read, and it is very troublesome to explain.

If If the meaning of the sentence is sufficient, remember it.

If the meaning is not enough, remember it. If the meaning is insufficient, but the meaning is consistent with the previous sentence, remember it. If the meaning is not enough, add another sentence, then remember: ; If you are surprised and appreciate the words, write it down!; If you ask a question, write it down; If you quote evidence, write "" before and after the sentence; If you add annotation, write () before and after the sentence; And when two paragraphs are connected, add "" Heng Ru——. "

Although Zhang Deyi did not consciously introduce punctuation to the domestic intelligentsia, he even opposed it and felt that these punctuations were cumbersome.

However, in the process of planting willows unintentionally, it brought a new trend to the development of Chinese language symbols.

Hu Shi’s new punctuation angered Zhang Taiyan

Before and after the New Culture Movement, the intellectual community conducted a comprehensive reflection on Chinese language and writing.

At the same time that vernacular writing came to the stage, the demand for new punctuation also emerged.

In August 1916, Hu responded to the invitation of "Science" magazine and wrote an article "On Sentence Reading and Character Symbols", comprehensively expounding his theoretical thinking on sentence reading and character symbols, which became the foundation of the new punctuation. do.

"Science" magazine was published in the summer of 1914 by Zhao Yuanren, an overseas student at Cornell University in the United States (later became one of the four mentors of the Qing Dynasty Academy of Sciences, as famous as Wang Guowei, Chen Yinke, and Liang Qichao) ), Yang Xingfo and others founded with the idea of ??"saving the country through science".

After Hu Shi arrived at Cornell University in the United States at the end of 1910 as the second batch of "Geng Geng Scholars", he became good friends with the founder of "Science" and often published articles, "Reading and Reading of Analects" Text Symbols" is one of them.

In fact, in 1914 before this, Hu Shi created a set of "sentence reading symbols" that he used in his diary: single straight "?", double brackets "(())", summary number" ￣￣￣" and so on. The article "Reading of Sentences and Character Symbols" was added and modified based on it.

In 1918, Hu Shi wrote "An Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy" and used this new set of punctuation marks.

After it was published, he specially sent a copy to Zhang Taiyan (a master of Chinese studies), with the words "Mr. Taiyan points out the error" on it, and the signature "Gift from Hu Shi", and added "Mr. Taiyan" next to their names. A black bar symbol.

However, punctuation marks were not legal at that time. After Zhang Taiyan saw it, he did not understand why Hu Shi would draw this symbol. When he saw a black bar next to his name, he felt very angry and couldn't help shouting. He scolded: "Who is Hu Shi! You are scribbling on my name!" When I saw that there was a black line next to Hu's name, I realized that it was not something embarrassing, and my anger was half gone.

It seems that there are still many twists and turns in the application process of new punctuation.

After "Science", "New Youth" became an important place to promote new symbols. Qian Xuantong, Chen Duxiu, Liu Bannong, Lu Xun and other famous people in the field of literature have all made great contributions to the spread of new symbols. .

(Excerpt from Guangming Book)

There are punctuation marks.