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けんてん【圏点】

kenten

Definition

Noun

  1. Kenten are punctuation marks used in Japanese typography that are placed over, under or besides characters in order to emphasize them in a text, akin to the use of the underline in English. They generally resemble dots or circles (◦, •, ●, ○), but may also take on the form of commas (﹅, ﹆) or, more rarely, triangles (▲, △).
    1. この夢は終わらない
            ﹅  ﹅  ﹅  ﹅  ﹅
      kono yume wa owaranai
      "This dream is not over"

Notes

This form of punctuation was common during the Meiji era (1868–1912), but has now largely fallen out of use due to the limits of early modern technology. Typographically, tools implementing Kenten must compensate for the fact that texts may use ruby characters, so the punctuation marks must be placed at the top-level. Web support for Kenten marks is included in the CSS3 specifications (text-emphasis), but currently no browser supports this property.

Spelling

OrthographyForm
Kanji圏点
Kanaけんてん
Romanizationkenten

意味:けんてん【圏点】、ぼうてん【傍点】、わきてん【脇点】

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圏点
Cite this entry: Read, Zachary. (2013, July 9). けんてん【圏点】 : kenten | define meaning. JLect: Japonic Languages and Dialects Database. Retrieved 2025, January 20, from https://www.jlect.com/entry/2019/kenten/.