- From: Ca Phun Ung <caphun@yelotofu.com>
- Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:20:53 +0800
- To: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Cc: WHAT working group <whatwg@whatwg.org>, 'HTML WG Public List' <public-html@w3.org>, www-html@w3.org
Ca Phun Ung wrote: > In Chinese names are traditionally distinguished with a underline to > indicate it is in fact a name, this has been the case for thousands of > years, otherwise it is hard for the reader to distinguish meaning > because a person's name is usually taken from common words, such as > "dragon", "peace", "gold", "clever" etc. Sorry, I need to correct myself regarding the above. Punctuations, which includes underlines, only came into being during the Chinese cultural revolution around 1919. Before this there were no punctuations in Chinese literature. So the Chinese got by for thousands of years without any form of underline, period, comma, brackets etc. Punctuation is a western influence. And in recent years underlining people's names have become less and less a norm, though still understood when it happens and usually often used to zero out ambiguity if the person's name is odd or uncommon. -- Ca Phun Ung Web: http://yelotofu.com
Received on Tuesday, 15 April 2008 15:24:01 UTC