In German and French there are significant differences when writing numbers. In case a declarative and an interrogative appear in the same clause, the question is isolated with the starting-symbol inverted question mark, for instance: En el caso de que no puedas ir con ellos, ¿quieres ir con nosotros? (‘In case you cannot go with them, would you like to go with us?’). The two English sentences “Do you like summer?” and “You like summer.” are translated respectively as “¿Te gusta el verano?” and “Te gusta el verano”, because there is no difference in the word order of a question and a statement in Spanish. The additional punctuation tools help readers recognize questions and exclamations in long sentences. Unlike the ending marks, which are fully above the line in a sentence, the reverted marks are placed about halfway below the line. Written Spanish and older languages, such as Catalan, require an inverted mark of interrogation (¿) or exclamation (¡) at the beginning of interrogatives and exclamations, as well as the normal marks at the end (? and !). So the English “How are you?” turns into the Greek “How are you ”. The Greek language uses the English semicolon ( ) as a question mark (?), while the colon (:) and semicolon ( ) are performed by a raised point ( However, the rules of punctuation vary greatly between languages. Punctuation can change a sentence drastically in its meaning:Ī woman: without her, man is nothing. These pauses were named after the sections they divided: the shortest pause was a comma (literally “that which is cut off”), the longest section was called a period (“a portion that has a beginning and an end”) and midway between the two was a colon (“a limb/ strophe”).
![different ways to write numbers in different languages different ways to write numbers in different languages](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/oqpqpeVkCRM/hqdefault.jpg)
When a speech was prepared in ancient Rome and Greece, marks were used to indicate where and for how long a speaker should pause. The origin of punctuation lies in classical rhetoric, the art of oratory. Punctuation marks structure and organizes written language, but also indicates pauses and intonation when reading aloud.