earticle

영어

Building upon previous research on punctuation, this paper aims to expand the current literature by exploring the functional concept of punctuation and comparing English and Korean “points.” Although punctuation allows for and must guarantee a certain degree of subjectivity, even arbitrariness in certain cases, it would still be useful to rebuild the concept of punctuation by exploring and accommodating the diverse perspectives and by reflecting the modern tendency. Based on a clearer notion, this paper then seeks to illustrate how individual “relationship-building” punctuation marks—English colon/dash, and their “form equivalent” marks, namely ssangjeom and julpyo, in Korean—take on the functional role as unique linguistic entities: they will be addressed in alphabetical order, with their functions and usage presented, followed by comparison and analysis. Although there are a number of punctuation marks in both English and Korean language systems, this paper limits its scope to colon, dash, and their equivalent marks in Korean, since more widely-used punctuation marks, such as comma and period, tend to be “fixed” in punctuation practices in rigid molds and the functions and usages of such marks share much similarity with the equivalent ones in Korean language. On the contrary, the punctuation marks that are dealt with herein often invite confusion and disagreement of interpretation, and the functions and usages are different.