Iteration mark


Iteration marks are characters or punctuation marks that represent a duplicated character or word.

[|Chinese]

In Chinese, 二 or 々 is used in casual writing to represent a doubled character. However, it is not used in formal writing anymore, and it never appeared in printed matter. In a tabulated table or list, vertical repetition can be represented by a ditto mark.

History

Iteration marks have been occasionally used for more than two thousand years in China. The bronze script which is a kind of formal writing from the Zhou Dynasty, shown in excerpt to the right, ends with “子二孫二寶用”, where the small 二 is used as iteration marks in the phrase “子子孫孫寶用”.

In certain [Malayo-Polynesian languages]

In Filipino, Indonesian, and Malay words that are repeated can be shortened with the use of numeral "2". For example, kata-kata can be shortened to kata2, and jalan-jalan can be shortened to jalan2. The usage of "2" can also replaced with superscript "²". The sign may also be used for reduplicated compound words with slight sound changes, for example hingar² for hingar-bingar. Suffixes may also be added after "2", for example in the word kebarat²an.
The use of this mark dates back to the time when these languages were written with the Arabic script, specifically Jawi or Pegon variety. Using the Arabic numeral ٢, words such as رام رام can be shortened to رام٢. The use of Arabic numeral ٢ were also adapted to several Brahmi derived scripts of the Malay archipelago, notably Javanese, Sundanese, Lontara, and Makassaran. As the latin alphabet was introduced to the region, western style Arabic numeral "2" came to be use for latin-based orthography.
The use of "2" as an iteration mark was official in Indonesia up to 1972, as part of the Republican Spelling System. Its usage is discouraged when the Enhanced Indonesian Spelling System was adopted, and even though it commonly found in handwriting or old signage, it is considered to be inappropriate for formal writing and documents.

Japanese

Japanese has various iteration marks for its three writing systems, namely kanji, hiragana, and katakana, but only the kanji iteration mark is commonly used today.
In Japanese, iteration marks are used to represent a duplicated character representing the same morpheme. For example, hitobito, "people", is usually written 人々, using the kanji for 人 with an iteration mark, 々, rather than 人人, using the same kanji twice, though this latter is allowed, and in this simple case might be used because it is easier to write. By contrast, while 日々 hibi "daily, day after day" is written with the iteration mark, as the morpheme is duplicated, 日日 hinichi "number of days, date" is written with the character duplicated, because it represents different morphemes. Further, while hibi can in principle be written as 日日, hinichi cannot be written as ×日々, since that would imply repetition of the sound as well as the character. In potentially confusing examples such as this, readings can be disambiguated by writing words out in hiragana, so hinichi is often found as 日にち or even ひにち rather than 日日.
Note that sound changes can occur in duplication, which is not reflected in writing, such as 人 hito + 人 hito = 人々 hitobito or 刻 koku + 刻 koku = 刻々 kokkoku, though this is also pronounced kokukoku.

Kanji

The formal name of the kanji repetition symbol is dōnojiten but is sometimes called noma because it looks like the katakana no and ma. This symbol originates from a simplified form of the character form :wikt:per se|per se, some kanji can be reduplicated to indicate plurality. This differs from Chinese, which normally repeats characters only for the purposes of adding emphasis, although there are some exceptions.
However, for some words duplication may alter the meaning:
Using 々 instead of repeating kanji is usually the preferred form, with two restrictions:
When the reading is different, the second kanji is often simply written out to avoid confusion. Examples of such include:
The repetition mark is not used in every case where two identical characters appear side by side, but only where the repetition itself is etymologically significant—when the repetition is part of a single morpheme. Where a character ends up appearing twice as part of a compound, it is usually written out in full:
Similarly, in certain Chinese borrowings, it is generally preferred to write out both characters, as in 九九 or 担担麺, though in practice 々 is often used.
In vertical writing, the character 〻, a cursive derivative of 二, can be employed instead, although this is increasingly rare.

Kana

uses different iteration marks; one for hiragana, ゝ, and one for katakana, ヽ. The hiragana iteration mark is seen in some personal names like さゝき Sasaki or おゝの Ōno, and it forms part of the formal name of the car company Isuzu.
Unlike the kanji iteration marks, which do not reflect sound changes, kana iteration marks closely reflect sound, and the kana iteration marks can be combined with the dakuten voicing mark to indicate that the repeated syllable should be voiced, for example みすゞ Misuzu. If the first syllable is already voiced, for example じじ jiji, the voiced repetition mark still needs to be used: じゞ rather than じゝ, which would be read as jishi.
While widespread in old Japanese texts, the kana iteration marks are generally not used in modern Japanese outside proper names, though they may appear in informal handwritten texts.

Repeating multiple characters

Tangut

In Tangut manuscripts the sign is sometimes used to represent a doubled character; this sign does not occur in printed texts. In Unicode this character is , in the Ideographic Symbols and Punctuation block.

Egyptian hieroglyphs

In Egyptian hieroglyphs, the signs: zp:Z1*Z1 — , literally meaning “two times”, repeat the previous sign or word.

Khmer, Thai and Lao

In Khmer, leiktō as for Thai, mai yamok and Lao, ko la represent a repeated syllable where as it besides the word. This used to be written as numeral two and the form changed over time. A repeated word could be used either, to demonstrate plurality, to emphasize or to soften the meaning of the original word.

Ditto mark

In English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Czech, Polish and Turkish lists, the ditto mark represents a word repeated from the equivalent position in the line above it; or an evenly-spaced row of ditto marks represents any number of words repeated from above. For example:
This is common in handwriting and formerly in typewritten invoices etc.
In Unicode, the ditto mark of Western languages has been defined to be equivalent to the. The separate character is to be used in the CJK scripts only.
The convention in Polish handwriting, Czech, Swedish, and Austrian German is to use a ditto mark on the baseline together with em-dashes, for example: