From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hebrew punctuation is similar to that of English and other Western languages.

Biblical Hebrew has fewer grammatical punctuation marks, which can sometimes make Biblical Hebrew ambiguous. As a result, it was clear that a larger amount of punctuation was needed, and Modern Hebrew adopted the same system of punctuation used in other Western languages such as English.

Punctuation

Quotations

With most printed Hebrew texts from the early 1970s and before, opening quotes are low (as in German), and closing quotes ones are high, often going above the letters themselves (as opposed to the gershayim, which is level with the top of letters). An example of this system is “ישראל„.

However, this distinction in Hebrew between opening and closing quotation marks has completely disappeared, and today, quotations are done like they are in English (ex. "ישראל"), with two high quotes. This is due to the advent of the Hebrew keyboard layout, which lacks the opening quotation mark („), in addition to the lack of "smart quotes" in Hebrew such as found in Microsoft Word for many other languages.

In addition, the quotation mark is often used for the similar looking but different gershayim mark (״), as it is also absent on the Hebrew keyboard.

Period, question mark, exclamation marks, commas

Periods, question marks, exclamation marks, and commas are used as in English.

A Hebrew period in a traditional "Serif" face usually looks like a tiny tilted square (a diamond). This is also true for the dot part of the question mark, and exclamation mark.

In Arabic, which is also written from right to left, the question mark "؟" is mirrored right-to-left from the English question mark. (Some browsers may display the character in the previous sentence as a forward question mark due to font or text directionality issues.) Hebrew is also written right-to-left, but uses a question mark that appears on the page in the same orientation as the English "?".^[1]

Colon and Sof Pasuq

Stemming from Bibical Hebrew, a sof pasuq (׃) is the equivalent of a period, and is used in some writings such as prayer books. Since a sof pasuq is absent from the Hebrew keyboard layout, and looks very similar to the colon (:), a colon is often substituted for a sof pasuq.

Vertical bar and paseq

Also coming from Bibical Hebrew, a paseq (׀) is used as a word separator. Also not on a standard Hebrew keyboard, a vertical bar (|) is often used instead. The vertical bar, a standard key on any keyboard, is used in English for such applications as mathematics and computing.

Hyphen and maqaf

The maqaf (־) is the Hebrew hyphen (-), and has virtually the same purpose for connecting two words together as in English. It is different from the Hyphen in the way it's drawn (a hyphen is in the middle in terms of height, the maqaf is at the top) and has a biblical origin which is unlike many other Modern Hebrew punctuation symbols, which are simply migrated from European languages. The maqaf is well-used in Hebrew typography, most books and newspapers will use it and have the hyphens higher than one would find in English. However, in online writing, it is seldom used because like other Hebrew characters, it is absent on a Hebrew keyboard. As a result, a standard English hyphen (-), is most often used in online writings.

This situation can be compared to users preferring hyphen (-) over Minus (−), en dash (–) and em dash (—).

Brackets/Parentheses

Brackets or Parentheses, "(", and ")" are the same in Hebrew as in English. Since Hebrew is written from right to left, ) becomes an opening bracket, and ( a closing bracket, the opposite from English (which is written left to right).

Israeli currency sign

The sheqel sign (₪) is the currency sign for the Israeli currency (the New Israeli Sheqel), in the way $, £, and €, exist for other currencies.The sheqel sign, like the dollar sign ("$"), is usually placed to the left of the number (i.e. "₪12,000" and not "12,000₪"), but since Hebrew is written from right to left, the symbol is actually written after the number. It is either not separated from the preceding number, or is separated only by a thin space.

Unlike the dollar sign, the new sheqel sign is not used that often when handwriting monetary amounts, and is generally replaced by the abbreviation ש״ח (standing for Sheqel Hadash, lit. New Sheqel).

Apostrophe and quotation marks

For more details on this topic, see Geresh and Gershayim.

The geresh (׳), is the Hebrew equivalent of a period in abbreviations (e.g. abbrev.), in addition to being attached to Hebrew letters to indicate the soft g ([dʒ]) and ch ([tʃ]) sounds in foreign names (ex. Charles, Jake). The gershayim (״), is a Hebrew symbol symbolizing that a sequence of characters is an acronym, and is placed before the last character of the word. Due to a Hebrew keyboard having neither a geresh nor gershayim, they are usually replaced online with a apostrophe (') and quotation mark ("), due to their visual similarity. The quotation mark and apostrophe are higher than the gershayim and geresh, where gershayim and the geresh are at level with the top of Hebrew letters and the quotation mark and apostrophe are above them.

Some Hebrew specific fonts (fonts with only Hebrew letters), such as "David" will have the apostrophe and quotation marks as geresh and gershayim (and if the actual geresh and gershayim was used it would look the same as the "apostrophe" and "quotation mark" letter).

Math

Math in Israel uses all the same symbols as in English, including Western numerals, which are written left to right. The only variant that exists is an alternative plus sign, which is a plus sign which looks like an inverted capital T. Unicode has this symbol at position U+FB29 "Hebrew letter alternative plus sign" (﬩).^[2] However, most books for adults use the international symbol "+".

Reversed Nun

Reversed Nun (also called "inverted nun", "nun hafukha" or "nun menuzerret") is a rare character found in two Biblical Hebrew texts.^[3] Although in Judaic literature it is known as nun hafukha (“reversed nun”), it does not function as any sort of letter in the text.^[3] It is not part of a word, and it is not read aloud in any way. It is simply a mark that is written, and therefore it is punctuation and not a letter. Also, it is surrounded by space.^[3]

While it depends on the particular manuscript or printed edition, it is found in nine places: twice in the Book of Numbers (prior to and after Numbers 10:34-36), and seven times in Psalm 107.^[3] It is uncertain today what it was intended to signify.^[3]

In many manuscripts, it does not even resemble a transformed nun at all, and when it does, sometimes it appears reversed (as mentioned above), sometimes inverted, sometimes turned 180°.^[3] Other times it appears to look like the letter Z.^[3]

Hebrew points (vowels)

While in Modern Hebrew these points ('niqqud') are generally not used outside poetry and children's books, occasionally one might put in a vowel point ("diacritic") to resolve ambiguity.

One of these neqqudot, the rafe, is no longer used in Hebrew, however it is routinely used in Yiddish spelling (as defined by YIVO).

Hebrew cantillation marks

The cantillation marks (Hebrew:טעמים Teamim) have a very specialized use. They are only found in printed Hebrew texts of Tanakh to be used as a guide for chanting the text, either from the printed text or, in the case of the public reading of the Torah, to be memorized along with vowel marks as the Sefer Torah includes only the letters of the text without cantillation or vowel marks. Outside the Tanakh, the cantillation marks are not used in modern spoken or written Hebrew at all. The cantillation marks provide a structure to sentences of Tanakh similar to that provided by punctuation marks.

The "Image" column is there for people unable to see the leftern most column

See also

• Hebrew keyboard
• Hebrew spelling

Notes