專名號 and 書名號

[pazu]

專名號 and 書名號

Do you still use 專名號 and 書名號 as punctuation marks? It seems to me they were extinct in most writing these days.

書名號 (wavy underline) was replaced by 《》 which is a good improvement, but how about 專名號？I think it can be quite handy sometimes, though may not be very convenient for input.

[shibo77]

书名号 « » or <>

printed-materials-title marks

Used to enclose the title of a book, article, newspaper, journal, etc.

专名号 _____

proper-noun mark

Used to underline the elements of proper nouns such as the name of a person, place, dynasty etc. in histroical documents.

-Shibo

[pazu]

Shibo: 1. 專名號 is not a wavy underline.

2. Are u answering my question?

3. Do they use 專名號 to underline book's name?

[shibo77]

Oh sorry!

My 新华Xinhua Character Dictionary says that if the 专名号____ is used, then the 书名号« »<> changes to a wavy underline. Otherwise use « »<> for 书名号.

As for me, I only use « ». I have never used 专名号 ____, and did not know its name until now. But I have seen ___ and the wavy underlines before in certain historical documents.

-Shibo

[skylee]

I was comparing two editions of 中國人史綱 (one was published by 天地圖書 of HK in 2000, the other by 星光出版社 of Taiwan in 2002) and could not help noticing that both 專名號 and 書名號 were used throughout the Taiwan edition (i.e. vertical / waved line on the left of every name). There were none, however, in the HK version.

Personally I've never considered the two punctuation marks necessary (though in a history book they might be useful), and would really prefer the HK edition. But then the Taiwan edition was about HKD20 cheaper, so ...

(BTW, discovered the first mistake on page 2 - 武照.)