Why Is a Period Called That, When Did Spaces Appear, and Where Did the Comma Come From? A Look at Hebrew Punctuation History
We tend to take it for granted, but the space—the oldest and arguably the most useful punctuation mark in Hebrew—was not originally part of the language. In ancient Hebrew inscriptions, words were sometimes separated by a dot in the middle of the line, and sometimes not separated at all. Other languages, like Latin and Greek, wrote texts as a continuous string of letters, leaving the reader to figure out where one word ended and the next began.
The use of spaces in Hebrew only began during the Second Temple period, when the square Aramaic script was adopted. Manuscripts from the Dead Sea Scrolls show different spacing styles: sometimes spaces, sometimes dots or lines, and sometimes fully continuous text. A single space became standard in Hebrew only in the late Middle Ages, following its adoption in other languages. The word רווח (space) appears in the Book of Genesis (32:17), but its meaning as a separator between words is first recorded in the Babylonian Talmud (Menachot 30a).
Separating Sentences? That Took Even Longer
A clear distinction between sentences in Hebrew developed gradually. Writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls used various methods to separate sections—new lines, horizontal lines, or colons—but no uniform system existed. Manuscripts from the Cairo Geniza, dating to the late first millennium CE, show dividing lines and circles, sometimes with a dot in the center. Even after the invention of printing, no single system for marking sentence breaks had taken hold.
A significant influence came from the system of cantillation marks (טעמי המקרא), developed in the second half of the first millennium. These included symbols indicating pauses—similar to modern commas and periods—but they were mainly used for biblical chanting rather than in everyday texts.
The Modern Period Came from Christianity
The period as we know it today arrived through Christian traditions. It first appeared in medieval Latin manuscripts of the Bible and the New Testament around the 8th century and later spread to other European texts. In the 16th century, Rabbi Yehoshua Boaz, in his book Shiltei HaGibborim, compared European punctuation marks to biblical cantillation symbols. Early Hebrew printers used periods inconsistently, and it wasn’t until the 19th century that they became standard in Hebrew writing.
One of the earliest known examples of Hebrew punctuation appears in a 1686 edition of Rabbi Yitzchak Abarbanel’s commentary on the Early Prophets, printed in Leipzig. The publisher included an explanation for readers:
A slash ( / ) indicates a brief pause.
A question mark ( ? ) signals a question or doubt.
An exclamation mark ( ! ) is for shouting or emphasis.
A period ( . ) or colon ( : ) marks the end of an idea.
Where Did Hebrew Punctuation Names Come From?
Many punctuation terms in Hebrew reflect various linguistic influences.
Loan translations from European languages led to names like סימן שאלה (question mark) and נקודה (period).
Some names originate from biblical cantillation marks. The term פסיק (comma) originally referred to a pause symbol used in biblical chanting, though it looked different from today’s comma.
The terms מירכה and גרש were borrowed from musical notations in biblical chanting. The first indicated an elongated note, while the second, derived from the root גר"ש, suggested a pulling or stretching motion.
The word מקף (hyphen) comes from Aramaic and means connection, which reflects both its function and shape.
More recent innovations introduced additional terms.
The word נקודתיים (colon) was coined in the late 19th century by the writer Chaim Leib Hazan, who also introduced סוגריים (parentheses).
Descriptive names were used for שלוש נקודות (ellipsis) and קו מפריד (dash).
The term לוכסן (slash) was introduced in the 1970s to replace the foreign terms קו נטוי and סלש. Its origin traces back to the Greek word luksos (slanted, diagonal), which appeared in the Mishnah and the Jerusalem Talmud. In the Babylonian Talmud and later Hebrew, the word evolved into אלכסון.