Appendix C Selected International Punctuation Symbols

This appendix consists of one table, which lists punctuation symbols used in various countries and describes typical usage.

Selected International Punctuation Symbols

Symbol	Description	Languages	Usage
„ "	Quotation marks	Czech, German	Commonly used in both.
„ "	Quotation marks, low-high pair	Danish, Hungarian, Polish, Russian	Used in Russian to mark a quotation within a quotation Standard in Hungarian and Polish..
" "	Smart quotation marks	Dutch, English, Italian, Spanish	Commonly used in all.
" "	Quotation marks	Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish	Most commonly used quotation marks in Danish, Finnish, and Swedish. Used occasionally in Norwegian..
' '	Single smart quotation marks	Dutch, English, Italian, Spanish	Used in English, Spanish, and Italian to mark a quotation within a quotation. Standard in Dutch
' '	Single quotation marks	Danish, Finnish, Hungarian, Norwegian, Swedish	Used in Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish to mark a quotation within a quotation. Used in Hungarian in philological texts.
" "	Straight quotation marks	Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish	Occasionally used in Swedish instead of standard single smart quotation marks. Occasionally used in Finnish instead of quotation marks.
' '	Single straight quotation marks	Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish	Used to mark a quotation within a quotation.
« »	Chevron quotation marks	French, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish	Used in Italian as an alternative to smart quotation marks.
» «	Chevron quotation marks	Danish, German, Hungarian	Used in Hungarian to mark a quotation within a quotation. Occasionally used in Danish
» »	Chevron quotation marks	Finnish, Swedish	Occasionally used in both languages.
	Left and right quotation marks	Chinese	Standard.
or	Ideographic quotation marks	Chinese, Japanese	Standard.
;	Question mark	Greek	Standard.
	Arabic question mark	Arabic	Standard.
¿ ?	Question marks	Spanish	Standard. Used as a pair.
¡ !	Exclamation marks	Spanish	Standard. Used as a pair.
.	Semicolon	Greek	Standard.
	Arabic semicolon	Arabic	Standard.
–	En dash	Most European languages	Some languages, such as Czech, Danish, Dutch, and Swedish, use the en dash instead of the em dash. Spanish uses the en dash for hyphenated words and compound terms.
—	Em dash	All European languages except Danish and Swedish	The en dash and the em dash are not typically used together in a single document. In Spanish, the em dash is some times used for incidental clauses or text in dialog boxes.
	Ideographic comma	Chinese, Japanese	Standard in both.
	Arabic comma	Arabic	Standard.
	Ideographic period	Chinese, Japanese	Standard in both.