Hebrew punctuation

(Some browsers may display the character in the previous sentence as a forward question mark due to font or text directionality issues.)

Hebrew is also written right-to-left, but uses a question mark that appears on the page in the same orientation as Latin ⟨?⟩.

[2][3] Stemming from Biblical Hebrew, a sof pasuq ⟨ ׃‎ ⟩ is the equivalent of a period, and is used in some writings such as prayer books.

The word itself means "separator", but this name was a medieval innovation by later Jews; the root פּ־ס־ק‎ does not exist in the Biblical Hebrew canon.

[5] James Kennedy, an English hebraist, wrote a book about the paseq in which he hypothesized that it was an ancient mark serving the same purpose as the modern word sic (in non-Latin texts).

[5] The Westminster Leningrad Codex contains over 500 paseqs; William Wickes, an influential scholar in this area, divide them into nine classes;[6] Wilhelm Gesenius, drawing on Wickes, divided them into five:[7] An example may be found in Genesis 1:5 in the Westminster Leningrad Codex and many other manuscripts: וַיִּקְרָ֨א אֱלֹהִ֤ים׀ לָאוֹר֙ י֔וֹם וְלַחֹ֖שֶׁךְ קָ֣רָא לָ֑יְלָה וַֽיְהִי־עֶ֥רֶב וַֽיְהִי־בֹ֖קֶר י֥וֹם אֶחָֽד׃ פ‎The maqaf (מַקָּף‎) ⟨־‎⟩ is the Hebrew hyphen ⟨-⟩, and has virtually the same purpose for connecting two words as in English.

This use continues into the present beyond reprintings of Biblical texts;[4] for example, the sheet music for modern Hebrew songs is normally printed with them.

[9] The maqaf is well-used in Hebrew typography; most books and newspapers use it and have the hyphens higher than one would find in English.

The new shekel sign can be typed on desktop Linux and Windows 8 and higher systems using the combination AltGr-4 according to the SI 1452 standard.

), in addition to being attached to Hebrew letters to indicate sounds like soft g [dʒ] and ch [tʃ] in foreign names such as Charles (צ׳ארלס‎) and Jake (ג׳ייק‎).

Owing to a Hebrew keyboard's having neither a geresh nor gershayim, they are usually replaced online with, respectively, the visually similar apostrophe ⟨'⟩ and quotation mark ⟨"⟩.

[16] These signs (points, neqqudot) indicate voweling or some other aspects of the pronunciation of a letter or word.

While in Modern Hebrew they are not generally used outside poetry and children's books, a vowel point or other diacritic is occasionally added to resolve ambiguity.

One of these neqqudot, the rafe, is no longer used in Hebrew, even though it is routinely used in Yiddish spelling (as defined by YIVO).