Re: OT: Punctuation

Gustavo Eulalio wrote:
>
>         How do you guys deal with punctuation in your conlangs? How
> do languages that don't have punct. marks express the same thing? How
> could we possibly improve or simplify our punctuation system?
>
        Well, it depends on the language, the writing system, my mood :),
etc...

- Azak: this language uses contextual suffixes for marking
interrogation, exclamation, surprise, etc... and thus has no need for a
complicated punctuation. Thus it has only a marker of end of sentence
(the pipe |) and a marker of pause (a half-pipe). It has no
capitalisation but the roots and the endings are written with two
different scripts (an alphabet and a syllabary).

- Reman: being a Romance language, it has all the Romance punctuation,
as well as capitalisation.

- Moten: it uses most of the French punctuation, except the semi-colon
which is not used, and the quotes are marked by kinds of squared
apostrophes. It has also capitalisation at the beginning of sentences
and for proper nouns.

- Notya: its particular writing system (with the first letter englobing
the whole word) allows words to be written without spaces between them,
and indeed they are written without any space. Also, like Azak it has
only a marker of end of sentence and a marker of pause.

- Chama"o"cho: here comes the big part. Chasma"o"cho's punctuation is
like the language itself: disturbing. It uses the comma as an end of
sentence, the pipe as an end of paragraph, the semi-colon to surround
questions and the colon to surround exclamations (see my earlier post
for more about it), brackets instead of parentheses, the underscore as
suspension marks, quotes for quotes, the dot as a hyphen (even used to
hyphenize quotes, brackets, questions and exclamations) and the
apostrophe is a letter in its own right, with its spelling (ae /aj/).
Capitalisation is used to begin paragraphs and titles (but not to begin
sentences!) and for proper nouns and all words related to them. It is
still used even if the word happens to be incorporated in the verb
complex (allowing written "words" to have a capital letter inside them
:) ).

        Well, now you see what can be done :) .

--
        Christophe Grandsire

        Philips Research Laboratories --  Building WB 145
        Prof. Holstlaan 4
        5656 AA Eindhoven
        The Netherlands

        Phone:  +31-40-27-45006
        E-mail: grandsir@natlab.research.philips.com