Ditto mark
 |
This article relies largely or entirely upon a single source. (June 2010) |
The ditto mark (or Stenoien Mark[citation needed]) (″) is a typographic symbol indicating that the word(s) or figure(s) above it are to be repeated. For example:
-
Black pens, box of twenty ..... £2.10 Blue ″ ″ ″ ″ ..... £2.35
The word ditto comes from the Tuscan language, where it is the past participle of the verb dire (to say), with the meaning of “said”, as in the locution “the said story”. The first recorded use of ditto with this meaning in English occurs in 1625.[1] Early evidence of ditto marks can be seen on a cuneiform tablet of the Neo-Assyrian period (934 – 608 BC) where two vertical marks are used in a table of synonyms to repeat text,[2] while in China the corresponding mark is two horizontal lines (二); see iteration mark.
Unicode[edit]
For Western scripts, including Latin script, Unicode has not defined a separate ditto character, but instead U+2033 ″ double prime (HTML: ″ ″) may be used for this purpose.[3] In practice, however, closing double quotation marks (”) or straight double quotation marks (") are often used instead. The abbreviation do. is also used.[citation needed]
For East Asian scripts (CJK, specifically Bopomofo, Hangul, Han, Hiragana and Katakana), the full-width ditto mark is U+3003 〃 ditto mark (HTML: 〃 block: CJK Symbols and Punctuation)[4][5]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ Definition at The Free Dictionary
- ^ K.4375 and File:Library of Ashurbanipal synonym list tablet.jpg
- ^ "CJK symbols and Punctuation". Retrieved 2013-05-20.
- ^ "Unicode Standard Annex #24: Unicode Script Property". 2.9 Script_Extensions Property. Retrieved 2013-05-19.
- ^ "ScriptExtensions.txt". Retrieved 2013-05-19.
