Compound point
Obsolete typographical construction / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The compound point is an obsolete typographical construction. Keith Houston reported that this form of punctuation doubling, which involved the comma dash (,—), the semicolon dash (;—), the colon dash, or "dog's bollocks" (:—), and less often the stop-dash (.—) arose in the seventeenth century, citing examples from as early as 1622 (in an edition of Othello). More traditionally, these paired forms of punctuation seem most often to have been called (generically) compound points and (specifically) semicolon dash, comma dash, colon dash, and point dash.[1][2][3]
Quick Facts ;— ...
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A more emphatic or longer semicolon. |
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Quick Facts .— ...
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A full stop that emphasises the sentence it starts. |
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Quick Facts ,— ...
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A mark used in various ways: to mark parentheticals that are placed where a comma would otherwise be needed in the principal sentence; to mark an idea repeated in different words; as a more emphatic comma; or for separating several clauses with a common dependence from the clause on which they depend. |
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Quick Facts :— ...
:— | |
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A mark that indicates a list, the contents of which start on the next line; or as a more emphatic colon. |
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