Danda
Punctuation mark in Indic scripts
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In Indic scripts, the daṇḍa (Sanskrit: दण्ड daṇḍa "stick")[a] is a punctuation mark.[2] The grapheme consists of a single vertical stroke.
| । | |
|---|---|
Daṇḍa | |
| U+0964 । DEVANAGARI DANDA |
Use
The daṇḍa marks the end of a sentence or line, comparable to a full stop (period) as commonly used in the Latin alphabet, and is used together with Western punctuation in Hindi and Nepali.
The daṇḍa and double daṇḍa are the only punctuation used in Sanskrit texts.[2] No distinct punctuation is used to mark questions or exclamations, which must be inferred from other aspects of the sentence.[2]
In metrical texts, a double daṇḍa is used to delimit verses, and a single daṇḍa to delimit a pada, line, or semi-verse. In prose, the double daṇḍa is used to mark the end of a paragraph, a story, or section.[2]
Computer encoding
Unicode encodes the daṇḍas as U+0964 । DEVANAGARI DANDA and U+0965 ॥ DEVANAGARI DOUBLE DANDA. The Unicode standard recommends using this character also in other Indic scripts, like Bengali, Telugu, Oriya, and others.[3] Encoding it separately for every Indic script was proposed,[4] but has been accepted. (The graphemes for x0964 and x0965 can be implemented in a computer font with a glyph design that matches the conventional style for those languages.)
Danda and similar characters are encoded separately for some scripts in which its appearance or use is significantly different from the Devanagari one. These include forms with adornments, such as the Rgya Gram Shad.[1]
ISCII encoded daṇḍa at 0xEA.
See also
- Vertical bar – Typographic symbol, |
- Pilcrow – Symbol (¶) to identify a paragraph, the latin character-set equivalent of the double daṇḍa
Footnotes
- Other terms used in various languages for variants of daṇḍa include kaan (or khan), shad (or shya), carik siki (doubled to carik pareren), ta-rol, mucaad, pada lingsa (doubled to pada lungsi) and section (mark).[1]
