Interpunct

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Punctuation marks
apostrophe (' ) parentheses ( ( ) ), brackets ( [ ] ); ( { } ); ( < > ) colon ( : ) comma ( , ) dash ( ‒ ); ( – ); ( — ); ( ― ) ellipsis ( … ) ( ... ) exclamation mark ( ! ); ( ¡ ! ) full stop/period ( . ) hyphen ( - ); ( ‐ ) interrobang ( ‽ ) question mark ( ? ); ( ¿ ? ) quotation marks ( ‘ ’ ); ( “ ” );     ( ‚ ’ ); ( „ ” ); ( ‚ ‘ ); ( „ “ );     ( ‹ › ); ( « » ); ( › ‹ ); ( » « );     ( 「 」 ); ( 『 』 ) semicolon ( ; ) slash ( / ) and backslash ( \ ) space (   ) and interpunct ( · )
ampersand ( & ) asterisk ( * ) and dagger ( † ‡) bullet ( •, more ) commercial at ( @ ) number sign ( # ) prime ( ′ ) and double prime (″) tilde ( ~ ) underscore ( _ ) vertical bar / pipe ( | )

Interpunct is a small middle dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script. The dot was vertically centered, e.g. "DONA·NOBIS·REQVIEM".

Interpuncts were perhaps the first consistent visual representation of word boundaries in a written language. (Ancient Greek, by contrast, had not developed interpuncts; all the letters ran together.)

When a wave of enthusiasm for all things Greek swept ancient Rome, the use of interpuncts died out, presumably being inadequately fashionable.

The use of spaces for interword separation didn't appear until much later, roughly 600-800 AD.

A punctuation mark resembling the interpunct is used in the characteristically Catalan grapheme l·l (called ele geminada, "twinned l"), as in "paral·lel". It is used to distinguish such a case (pronounced as a long "l") from ll (palatalized, as in llum). Where the interpunct is not available, a period is substituted ("paral.lel").

In some word processors, interpunct is used to visualise either a hard space or space character.

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