Word divider

In languages which use the Latin, Cyrillic, and Arabic alphabets, as well as other scripts of Europe and West Asia, the word divider is a blank space, or whitespace.

However, not infrequently in inscriptions a vertical line, and in manuscripts a single (·), double (:), or triple (⫶) interpunct (dot) was used to divide words.

This practice was found in Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and continues today with Ethiopic, though there whitespace is gaining ground.

With the introduction of letters representing vowels in the Greek alphabet, the need for inter-word separation lessened.

Ancient inscribed and cuneiform scripts such as Anatolian hieroglyphs frequently used short vertical lines to separate words, as did Linear B.

In manuscripts, vertical lines were more commonly used for larger breaks, equivalent to the Latin comma and period.

In the modern Hebrew and Arabic alphabets, some letters have distinct forms at the ends and/or beginnings of words.