Hypodiastole

Hypodiastole (left). Note the difference from a comma (right).

The hypodiastole (Greek: ὑποδιαστολή, hypodiastolḗ, lit. 'lower separation [mark]'), also known as a diastole, was an interpunct developed in late classical and Byzantine Greek texts before the separation of words by spaces was commonplace. In the scriptio continua then used, a group of letters might have separate meanings as a single word or as a pair of words. The papyrological hyphen (enotikon) showed a group of letters should be read together as a single word, while the hypodiastole showed that they should be taken separately. Compare "ὅ,τι" ("whatever") to "ὅτι" ("...that...").

The hypodiastole was similar in appearance to the Greek comma and was eventually entirely conflated with it: in Modern Greek, the term ypodiastolī́ (υποδιαστολή) refers to the comma in its role as a decimal point and words such as ό,τι are written with standard commas. A separate Unicode point—ISO/IEC 10646 standard (U+2E12) (⸒)—exists for the hypodiastole but is only intended for reproductions of its historical occurrence in Greek texts.

See also

• interpunct
• obelos
• coronis
• paragraphos