Iteration mark

The example image shows an inscription in bronze script, a variety of formal writing dating to the Zhou dynasty, that ends with "子𠄠孫𠄠寶用", where the small 𠄠 ("two") is used as iteration marks in the phrase "子子孫孫寶用" ("descendants to use and to treasure").

[1] The use of this mark dates back to the time when these languages were written with Arabic script, specifically the Jawi or Pegon varieties.

The use of Arabic numeral ٢ was also adapted to several Brahmi derived scripts of the Malay archipelago, notably Javanese,[2] Sundanese,[2] Lontara,[3] and Makassaran.

Its usage was discouraged when the Enhanced Indonesian Spelling System was adopted, and even though it is commonly found in handwriting or old signage, it is considered to be inappropriate for formal writing and documents.

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 ひにち rather than 日日.

The formal name of the kanji repetition symbol (々) is dōnojiten (同の字点), literally "same character mark", but it is sometimes called noma (のま) because it looks like the katakana no (ノ) and ma (マ).

This symbol originates from a simplified form of the character 仝, a variant of "same" (同) written in the grass script style.

[5] Although Japanese kanji iteration marks are borrowed from Chinese, the grammatical function of duplication differs, as do the conventions on the use of these characters.

This differs from Chinese, which normally repeats characters only for the purposes of adding emphasis, although there are some exceptions (e.g., 人, rén, "person"; 人人, rénrén, "everybody").

The vertical kana repeat marks 〱 (unvoiced) and 〲 (voiced) resemble the hiragana character ku (く), giving them their name, kunojiten (くの字点).

In Khmer, leiktō (ៗ) as for Thai, mai yamok (ๆ) and Lao, ko la (ໆ) represent a repeated syllable where as it besides the word.

[6][7][8] The convention in Polish handwriting, Czech, Swedish, and Austrian German is to use a ditto mark on the baseline together with horizontal lines spanning the extent of the word repeated, for example: In western mathematics, the superscript numeral originated as a notation for exponentiation.

[9] Over time its meaning expanded to represent repeated function application as well, effectively making it a notation for marking iteration.