Punctuation and separators

In addition to date/time and numeric separators, localizers need to be aware of punctuation rules and the use of separators in other languages. For example:

• French uses a space, ideally a nonbreaking space to avoid pagination issues, before and after most punctuation.
• Spanish uses inverted question marks and exclamation marks at the beginning of interrogative and exclamatory sentences or clauses.
• Some Asian languages use full- and half-with punctuation, depending on the context.

Lists, especially when generated from data structures like arrays, lists, and sets, have additional complications. For example:

• Various style guides, both in American and British English, recommend or oppose the use of the serial (Oxford) comma for comma-separated lists.
• While comma-separated lists are common in English, semicolons can also be used as a list separator when the list items contain commas.
• Different list separators are used in other languages. Semicolons are often used when the decimal separator is a comma. Chinese and Japanese use the ideographic comma (、 U+3001) to separate list items.
• Japanese uses different coordinating conjunctions depending on whether the list is finite (all items are specified) or contains other items that aren't specified.

Guidelines for localization involving punctuation and separators:

• Don’t assume that words, clauses, and sentences are separated by spaces.
• Don’t assume that the punctuation mark used in one language is the same mark in another language. This is especially true for quotation marks and parentheses.
• Don’t concatenate punctuation. If you need to add punctuation to a string, enable the translator to have full control over the punctuation. You can achieve that by either including the punctuation in the string or use a string that contains the punctuation with a parameter.
• When generating lists from data structures, be aware of the grammar rules of the target language.