Emphasis mark

The emphasis mark^[1] or emphasis dot^[2] is a typographic marking used in some East Asian languages to indicate emphasis. The markings takes in many forms like, a dot or a bullet, a circle, or a triangle. It was used more traditionally, but nowadays, with technology, quotations or changing of font style prevails.^[1]

In Chinese

An example of emphasis mark used in traditional vertical style writing.

In China and Hong Kong, the emphasis mark (Chinese: 着重号) is used in textbooks and teaching materials. It is centred under each character highlighted in the horizontal texts, and centred to the right of each character in the vertical texts.

In Japanese

In Japan, the emphasis mark (傍点 bōten or 圏点 kenten) is usually a dot or a sesame dot and is centred above each character in the horizontal texts and to the right of each character in the vertical texts.

It is not unusual for kenten and ruby to concur on the same side of the main text (usually above or to the right), but this feature has not been possible with CSS.

In Korean

In South Korea, the emphasis mark (드러냄표 deureonaempyo) usually rules as a dot or circle centred above the characters in the horizontal texts and to the right of the characters in the vertical texts.

Examples:

using the CSS text-emphasis property:
한글의 본 이름은 훈민정음이다.
중요한 것은 왜 사느냐가 아니라 어떻게 사느냐 하는 문제이다.
using positioned characters: :
한글의 본 이름은 •훈•민•정•음이다.
중요한 것은 ◦왜 ◦사◦느◦냐◦가 아니라 ◦어◦떻◦게 ◦사◦느◦냐 하는 문제이다.

Characters

Apart from any single character, the following characters are used as emphasis marks in some implementations.^[3]

References

^ a b CSS Working Group (2022-05-05) [1999-01-27]. Etemad, Elika J.; Ishii, Koji (eds.). CSS Text Decoration Module Level 3 (Technical report). World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 2024-01-24. |version=Candidate Recommendation Draft, 5 May 2022}}
^ Japanese Layout Task Force (2012). Requirements for Japanese Text Layout. W3C. jlreq.
^ "text-emphasis". MDN Web Docs. Retrieved 2021-04-08.