Interpunct

However, this usage had already been declining since the 1968 ruling by the Ministry of Technology to use the full stop as the decimal point,[3] not only because of that ruling but also because it is the widely-adopted international standard,[4] and because the standard UK keyboard layout (for typewriters and computers) has only the full stop.

In the early modern era, full stops (periods) were sometimes written as interpuncts (for example in the depicted 1646 transcription of the Mayflower Compact).

The punt volat ("flying point") is used in Catalan between two Ls in cases where each belongs to a separate syllable, for example cel·la, "cell".

In situations where the flying point is unavailable, periods (as in col.lecció) or hyphens (as in col-lecció) are frequently used as substitutes, but this is tolerated rather than encouraged.

Historically, medieval Catalan also used the symbol · as a marker for certain elisions, much like the modern apostrophe (see Occitan below) and hyphenations.

On a mobile phone with a Catalan keyboard layout, the geminate L with a flying dot appears when holding down the L key.

[5][a] The interpunct is used in Chinese (which generally lacks spacing between characters) to mark divisions in words transliterated from phonogram languages, particularly names.

When the Chinese text is romanized, the partition sign is simply replaced by a standard space or other appropriate punctuation.

Thus, William Shakespeare is written as 威廉·莎士比亞 (Wēilián Shāshìbǐyà) and George W. Bush as 喬治·W·布什 (喬治·W·布殊; Qiáozhì W. Bùshí).

Titles and other translated words are not similarly marked: Genghis Khan and Elizabeth II are simply 成吉思汗 (Chéngjísī hán) and 伊利沙伯二世 (伊麗莎白二世; Yīlìshābái èrshì) without a partition sign.

Historically, it was derived in the late 19th century from an older barred-o with curly tail as an adaptation to the typewriter.

Starting in the late 19th century the use of such punctuation has largely fallen out of use in favor of whitespace, except in formal hand-written or liturgical texts.

'upper stop'; also known as άνω στιγμή, áno stigmí) is the infrequently-encountered Greek semicolon and is properly romanized as such.

In practice, the separate code point for ano teleia canonically decomposes to the interpunct.

[8] The Hellenistic scholars of Alexandria first developed the mark for a function closer to the comma, before it fell out of use and was then repurposed for its present role.

Dictionaries and grammar lessons in Japanese sometimes also use a similar symbol to separate a verb suffix from its root.

In addition, it is drawn like the middle dot in Windows default Korean fonts such as Batang.

In addition to the most common round form, inscriptions sometimes use a small equilateral triangle for the interpunct, pointing either up or down.

[citation needed] In Occitan, especially in the Gascon dialect, the interpunct (punt interior, literally, "inner dot", or ponch naut for "high / upper point") is used to distinguish the following graphemes: Although it is considered to be a spelling error, a period is frequently used when a middle dot is unavailable: des.har, in.hèrn, which is the case for French keyboard layout.

In modern editions of Old Occitan texts, the apostrophe and interpunct are used to denote certain elisions that were not originally marked.

The apostrophe is used with proclitic forms and the interpunct is used with enclitic forms: Bela Domna·l vostre cors gens E·lh vostre bel olh m'an conquis, E·l doutz esgartz e lo clars vis, E·l vostre bels essenhamens, Que, can be m'en pren esmansa, De beutat no·us trob egansa: La genser etz c'om posc'e·l mon chauzir, O no·i vei clar dels olhs ab que·us remir.

No·us [nows] = Non vos ("(do) not... you": direct object pronoun) E·l = En lo ("in the") No·i [noj] = Non i ("(do) not... there") // Que·us [kews] = Que vos ("that (I)... you") O pretty lady, all your grace and eyes of beauty conquered me, sweet glance and brightness of your face and all your nature has to tell so if I make an appraisal I find no one like in beauty: most pleasing to be found in all the world or else the eyes I see you with have dimmed.

There are two Unicode characters dedicated for this: Up to the mid twentieth century, and sporadically even much later, the interpunct could be found used as the decimal point in British publications, such as tables of constants (e.g., "π = 3·14159").

[citation needed] In the United States, the use of a centered dot for the multiplication of numbers or values of quantities is discouraged by NIST.

In chemistry, the middle dot is used to separate the parts of formulas of addition compounds, mixture salts or solvates (typically hydrates), such as of copper(II) sulphate pentahydrate, CuSO4·5H2O.

[15] A middot may be used as a consonant or modifier letter, rather than as punctuation, in transcription systems and in language orthographies.

[16] In Americanist phonetic notation, the middot is a more common variant of the colon ⟨꞉⟩ used to indicate vowel length.

Graphically, it may be high in the letter space (the top dot of the colon) or centered as the interpunct.