The prejudice that, before the introduction of a largely English style modern punctuation in the early twentieth century, Chinese written texts were unpunctuated results from several factors: The early dissemination and transmission of texts in print in China marginalized handwritten sources; and in printed texts punctuation indeed played a minor role. Moreover, punctuation is often too narrowly understood primarily as a mean…
Punctuation, Premodern(3,031 words)
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Matthias RICHTER, “Punctuation, Premodern”, in: Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, General Editor Rint Sybesma. Consulted online on 21 March 2023 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2210-7363_ecll_COM_00000346>
First published online: 2015
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