Punctuation

[r12a]

Reported by: Nat McCully

When I wrote the mojikumi engine in InDesign, and we did some research into what Korean required, we found several things: ... 2) Punctuation the I have seen from users is almost always single-byte. So, I was surprised to see the first item in the spec talk about full-width punctuation as I never see it in practice. There should be some mention of this difference. From my prior cursory research, I would not think it is true that the em-body is used ever for Korean use of parentheses, commas and periods.

[peremen]

While there is practically zero full-width punctuations are used in Korean, I think the whole article mentioning full-width punctuation is written with desktop publishing in mind. In sense of Korean manuscript papers where all characters are placed inside a fixed-width box, what is on the article makes sense. Also in computing, spacing before and after punctuation is sometimes substituted by spacing inside the glyph instead of appropriate space characters.

[r12a]

@peremen is it fair to say that the fullwidth punctuation characters, including 、：；？！。（｛［〔《》〕］｝）and 「」『』, are only used with vertically set text? Or are there occasions when they are used for horizontally set text too?

Are non-fullwidth punctuation characters used with vertically set text ever?

[peremen]

These full-width punctuation characters are used in vertical text only: 、：；？！。 Note that separate provision for vertical texts are dropped in March 2017 revision of Korean orthography standard and the horizontal punctuations could be used also there.

These full-width brackets are not used in horizontal texts: （｛［〔〕］｝）

These brackets are also used in horizontal texts too: 《》 『』 for denoting book or newspaper title (" is allowed), 「」 〈〉 for title of artwork, trademark, regulation (' is allowed). Since full-width counterparts are not present in Korean 2-set keyboard layout, they are usually found in official documents.

References:

• https://www.korean.go.kr/front/page/pageView.do?page_id=P000204&mn_id=30
• https://www.korean.go.kr/front/page/pageView.do?page_id=P000205&mn_id=30

[r12a]

@peremen the text at https://www.korean.go.kr/front/page/pageView.do?page_id=P000204&mn_id=30 uses ≪ U+226A MUCH LESS-THAN and ≫ U+226B MUCH GREATER-THAN for angle bracket quote marks. These are mathematical symbols – surely that can't be right?

≪한성순보≫는 우리나라 최초의 근대 신문이다.

I would have expected 《 U+300A LEFT DOUBLE ANGLE BRACKET and 》 U+300B RIGHT DOUBLE ANGLE BRACKET or « U+00AB LEFT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK and » U+00BB RIGHT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK with appropriate font glyphs.

Also, the link at https://www.korean.go.kr/front/page/pageView.do?page_id=P000205&mn_id=30 seems to have no information.

How reliable is this source?

[r12a]

In Korean Wikipedia i found entries such as the following in the references, which use fullwidth angle brackets:

《글로벌 세계대백과사전》, 〈수양버들〉

And in the article body i also found fullwidth angle brackets in use, although the font eliminates the space to the side, eg.

김소월의 시 〈실버들〉이 수양버들을 보고 지은 시이며[59], 시인 김용택이 2009년에 펴낸 시집 제목이 《수양버들》이다.[60] 시인 김광규는 시 〈4월의 가로수〉에서 전깃줄에 닿는다고 인간들이 가지치기를 해서 드러난, 수양버들의 가지가 잘린 모습을 팔다리가 잘려 나간 모습으로 형상화하여, 인간 문명의 파괴적 속성과 자연의 생명 복원력을 보여 주었다.

[peremen]

Also, the link at https://www.korean.go.kr/front/page/pageView.do?page_id=P000205&mn_id=30 seems to have no information.

How reliable is this source?

I tried to quote "14. 홑낫표와 홑화살괄호" (14. Single corner bracked and single angle bracket) of that webpage but unfortunately the content is not displayed due to some bug. The real content starts from the line 3795 of that webpage's source code. While they are using < and > for representing angle brackets as revealed in the HTML source, I don't think this is accurate either.

While National Institute of Korean Language is the main source of defining Korean orthography, unfortunately they don't really care about Unicode representation of symbols used. The one I used is much a de-facto ones extracted from various official documents. In addition, their website containing Korean orthography is terribly slow in my location.