Underline the names!

[woodcutter]

Wouldn't Chinese be a lot bleedin' easier to read if proper nouns were underlined, or marked in some other way?

Hasn't any clever official ever thought of that?

[gato]

Proper names are underlined in many books published in Taiwan, particularly historical books. Maybe in HK, too?

[skylee]

This punctuation mark (underline or a line on the left of the words) does exist. Take a look -> 中華人民共和國國家標準標點符號用法 (section 4.16 - 專名號)

It's just not very commonly used nowadays.

[Lu]

If you know enough Chinese it's easy to recognize the names in a text. So although it would make reading a bit easier for learners of Chinese, it wouldn't make much of a difference for native speakers (native readers?).

I believe we already had a topic on this some time ago...

[gougou]

Many foreign names are also separated by a dot, as in 阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦.

[woodcutter]

Educated native speakers, who have a good idea of where the boundaries of the language are, have almost no trouble with reading anything Lu, so last time you discussed it you obviously didn't really get the point. Chinese people are not born with characters in their heads, and have to learn to read at some point. I suspect that, like foreign learners, a fair proportion of what sends their brains reeling turns out only to be a name. Any measure like that which can make the characters easier to read, and avoid the philistine destruction of the characters which so many people on this forum seem to favour, is a good thing.

I think I mentioned underlining because I have run across it somewhere, maybe I saw it in Taiwan? The dots between foreign names (a far inferior method) are everywhere, of course. Why hasn't underlining caught on?

[kentsuarez]

Here in Taiwan, I believe the only place I've seen underlining is in kids' books. That's not to say there isn't any in adult books, but I've never come across it. Even now that I've achieved partial fluency in reading, I still prefer the underlining.

[perjp]

If I had 1 fen for each time I tried to look up something only to find out that its a name I'd have enough money to bribe the government into putting underlines on all names published from now on.

In a few years time I might have enough money to make them throw in word division as well.

[wushijiao]

If I had 1 fen for each time I tried to look up something only to find out that its a name

I could afford a 50RMB beer now and again! Besides names, in a more general sense, I'm not sure if I understand the logic behind Chinese punctuation.

Underlining names and providing small spaces between words would help millions of children and laowais, or if nothing else, might increase reading speeds.

[gato]

Here in Taiwan, I believe the only place I've seen underlining is in kids' books. That's not to say there isn't any in adult books, but I've never come across it.

Check out the history section of your bookstore/library. I have a history book published in HK in front of me that has all the personal names underscored with a straight line and all book names with a squiggly line. Moreover, "footnotes" follow immediately after the footnoted text, printed in a smaller font.

[trevelyan]

They used to do it in late 19th century documents. Occasionally there is either a sideline besides a proper name, or a small dot, similar to the common period. A more significant problem is the lack of punctuation -- making it hell to figure out where some sentences start and end.

I imagine the reason the practice stopped is because of the simplification of the language. This is a completely unscientific opinion, but I'm under the impression that the preference for double-character words in modern text flowed out of the baihua movement and popularization of the language. I find it easier to mentally segment modern text anyway.

If you're having trouble, try making a list of all of the characters you see being incorporated in foreign names. There is a relatively small subset used -- so whenever you see several of these in a row it's a virtual guarantee that you've stumbled across a foreign word imported into the language. If you want to save time, I've marked up the one's I've come across in the Adso database with the flag "PHONETIC".