Punctuation

In addition to letters, the Musa script includes punctuation.

End of Word: Space with Dot

In many fonts, Musa uses a dot in the space at the end of a word. This helps you read the separation between words as different from the separation between letters. We don't always need a dot: for example, in Akshara fonts, words are separated by the break in the stroke linking the letters. We also don't use the dot in Alphabet or Ligature fonts with kerning, since there isn't enough whitespace inside each word to be confused with the space between words.

A Dot is one cell wide, like all the letters. Musa fonts are fixed-width, and the glyphs are designed to be be of equal width (monospace).

End of Sentence: Double Dot

As you saw on the Intonation page, the end of a sentence is marked with intonation. In the absence of correct intonation, we use "defective" puntuation, described below.

End of Line

When a line of text reaches the right margin, we have to continue on the next line. These "soft" newlines are not embedded in the text; they are inserted when needed by the rendering algorithm. In Musa, as in most languages, we try to insert those line breaks between words, so as not to break a word up visually. In those cases, the newline replaces the space between the words.

Sometimes, that's not possible or feasible, for example when the word is so long that the preceding space is very far to the left, or missing altogether (a very long word or a short line). In that case, we just break the word when the line is full and continue on the next line, without using a hyphen or any other mark to indicate that a word is being split.

But we don't break lines within syllables. If you can't fit the entire syllable on the first line, walk back until you get to the previous syllable break, and break the line there.

New Paragraph: Portal

In Musa, a new paragraph is marked with a symbol that we call a Portal . It's just a black rectangle the size of a Musa domino. It's used where, in older typography, we might have used a pilcrow ¶, a section sign §, or even a fleuron ❦. For example, here's a text from around 1500AD showing paragraph markers in use.

It's typed using a shortcut, as described on the Keyboard page. The shortcut inserts six ASCII spaces (u0020) followed by the Portal rectangle, and finally a Musa space (uE040). The result is to insert both whitespace and a very dark mark at the beginning of a new paragraph - hard to miss! In addition, the use of ASCII spaces means renderers will often break the line there, so the new paragraph will start on a new line, but it doesn't have to - that helps keep Musa text justified. If the prior paragraph ends by chance at the end of the line, the new paragraph will be indented.

Outlines

Outlines and other forms of structured text, like laws and contracts, use section numbers at the left margin, followed by two normal Musa spaces. Here's an example, in Roman but with Musa punctuation:

8Vertebrates
80Fish
81Amphibians
82Reptiles
83Mammals
830Monotremes
831Marsupials
832Placentals
84Birds

Where do spaces go between words?

I mention above that a dot marks the end of a word, without discussing when a word ends. There are two types of difficult case: the first when words are too long, and the second when words are too short.

A famous example of the first is German, which seems to have very long words. The rule of thumb for Musa is to split the word in front of every stressed syllable, whether the stress is primary or secondary, even though only the last is inflected. For example, the Viennese company DDSG stands for Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft, which is currently spelled as one word, even though its abbreviation breaks it up into Donau Dampf Schifffahrts Gesellschaft (Danube Steam Shipping Company). The three final words each start with "secondary" stress, but Musa would spell them as individual words, even though only the last is inflected.

In English, we distinguish between a greenhouse and a green house, and here again, stress is a good indicator of the word boundary. But there are languages without (lexical) stress, like French, or with words with more than one stressed syllable, like Swedish, so stress isn't a definitive marker. In general, lexical items usually have their own words. Green and house each have their own meanings, but the meaning of greenhouse can't be predicted from them: it's its own word.

The other tricky case concerns small grammatical words, the kind of words that we usually don't stress at all in English. Our current spelling attaches prefixes and suffixes directly to their base words, and so does Musa: cat-s demand-ed un-reason-able help-ing-s. Our current spelling separates prepositions and articles, and so does Musa: in the room. But the word for the in Swedish is a suffix that Musa attaches to the base word, and Japanese has postpositions that Musa attaches to the base word. We don't have a definitive rule.

In general, we separate words to make the text easier to read. Most of the time, that separation don't represent anything phonetic. Yet almost always, a word boundary does represent the boundary between syllables, like a Break. But sometimes a syllable crosses a word boundary, as we'll discuss now.

Contraction, Enchainment, Elision, Liaison, and Sandhi

Most of the time, in most languages, words in speech aren't separated: cold rain sounds just like coal drain. When two consecutive words both contribute to a single syllable, that's called enchainment. For example, fine art usually sounds like fy nart, and true sport sounds like truce port: one syllable spans both words. When we write, we insert Yaya spaces between lexical words to make it easier to parse, but in Musa, if the space falls in the middle of a syllable, we use a different separator: the Musa hyphen, Yafa .

For example, French and Catalan feature elision, one of two ways to prevent consecutive vowels: the final vowel of one word is elided before another word beginning with a vowel, and the two words are combined. In French, the first word is usually a small word like le, ce, se, de, ne, me, te, que, je (all ending in a schwa), or one of their compounds like quelque. Catalan elides these small words both before and after the main word.

(French) l'ami 
(Catalan) l'amic 
(Catalan) dona'm 

The other way French prevents consecutive vowels is called liaison. Instead of removing the weak vowel so that the preceding consonant forms a syllable with the vowel at the beginning of the next word - elision - in liaison a new consonant is inserted between the two vowels. Often, this new consonant is a consonant that used to be pronounced, but has now disappeared from Modern French. In the current orthography, these liaison consonants are still written at the end of the first word, even when they're not pronounced - weird! In Musa, we don't write the final consonant when it's silent.

For example, the word les is one of many French words that are now spelled with a silent final consonant: the z (spelled s in French) at the end of les is normally silent. But when the subsequent word starts with a vowel, in order to separate the two vowels, the hitherto silent consonant becomes audible, and we prefix it to the following word. Compare les hommes - where the first word ends with a z and the h is silent - with les femmes. However, in the phrase les Halles, the H is not silent - it spells a hiatus, called h aspiré in French and Break in Musa - so the first s is silent and the space separates the two syllables.

  
les femmes les hommes les Halles

French also uses a lot of enchaînement without adding or removing sounds: words blend together. A common pattern is for a final consonant to "defect" to the next word if that word starts with a vowel. Since the two words now share a syllable, we write a hyphen instead of a space.

cher ami
cinq ami
bon ami

In the last example, the word bon also changes its pronunciation: the nasal vowel becomes a nasal consonant. That's an example of something called sandhi, where words change form because of the context. For an example from English, the word a is pronounced and written an when the following word starts with a vowel: a pear, but an apple. The word the also changes its pronunciation - from thə pear to thē apple - with no change in spelling. In Musa, we spell both changes:

   

Sometimes, you'll see a whole series of enchainements, elisions, and/or liaisons:

il n'y en a pas 

Now we'll talk about contractions, when two words combine to form a new word. French, Portuguese, Catalan, Italian, and even German have contractions where two words combine to form a single word, and we use neither a space nor an apostrophe or hyphen.

(French) de + les = des 
(Portuguese) de + os = dos 
(Catalan) de + els = dels 
(Italian) di + gli = degli 
(German) in + dem = im 

In English, we have something similar, written in Roman with an apostrophe. Unstressed am/is/are have/has/had will/would did often combine with a preceding pronoun as in I'm you've he'll, and stressed not often combines with a preceding auxiliary verb as in don't won't can't. We also use let's as a contraction of let us. In these cases, we don't separate the words at all.

I'm you're let's
I'll you've he'd
don't doesn't can't

The English possessive case is also written with an apostrophe, but it's not a contraction. In Musa, we don't write that apostrophe: the possessive the boy's bike is written just like the plural the boys bike and like the contraction the boy's big: .

John's home (possessive: the home of John)
the Johns' home (possessive: the home of the Johns family)
John's home (contraction: John is home)

Likewise, the words its - the possessive of it - and the word it's - the contraction of it is or it has - are spelled alike. So are theirs there's they're.

its (possessive: its home = the home of it)
it's (contraction: it's home = it is home)

English also has informal contractions formed by an auxiliary verb and a following to, like wanna gonna gotta hafta woulda coulda shoulda, that sometimes even coexist with normal contractions like could've. We write them as a ssingle word.

Defective Punctuation

In addition to the system just presented, Musa offers a second, simpler system of punctuation for use when there isn't enough data for full punctuation. This might arise, for example, as a result of transcription of existing Roman text, as opposed to text written directly in Musa.

In this defective system of punctuation, the period, question mark and exclamation point are simply transcribed using double accents :

Punctuation within a sentence uses some other signs :

Musa text can be bold, italic or underlined, for example for text cited from a different source or quotations.


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