Hebrew punctuation

Hebrew punctuation is similar to that of English and other Western languages, Modern Hebrew having imported additional punctuation marks from these languages in order to avoid the ambiguities sometimes occasioned by the relative lack of such symbols in Biblical Hebrew.

Punctuation

Quotation marks

With most printed Hebrew texts from the early 1970s and before, opening quotation marks are low (as in German), and closing ones are high, often going above the letters themselves (as opposed to the gershayim, which is level with the top of letters). An example of this system is „שָׁלוֹם”.

However, this distinction in Hebrew between opening and closing quotation marks has mostly disappeared, and today, quotations are most often punctuated as they are in English (such as ”שָׁלוֹם”), with both quotation marks high. This is due to the advent of the Hebrew keyboard layout, which lacks the opening quotation mark 〈„⟩, as well as to the lack in Hebrew of “smart quotes” in certain word processing programs.

In addition, the quotation mark is often used for the similar looking but different gershayim mark ⟨״〉, as that too is absent from the Hebrew keyboard.

Period, question mark, exclamation mark, comma

Periods (full stops), question marks, exclamation marks, and commas are used as in English.

A Hebrew period in a traditional serif face usually has defined corners (similar to a diamond). This is also true for other dots in punctuation, such as in the question mark and exclamation mark.

In Arabic, which is also written from right to left, the question mark 〈؟〉 is mirrored right-to-left from the Latin question mark.