ABSTRACT
Punctuation marks as known and used in European languages do not have a long tradition in Persian language, and even now, in spite of the attempts made to introduce them, are not quite standardized. Old Persian manuscripts usually did not use them, although some manuscripts show that certain scribes had invented a few marks to facilitate reading. As in English, a hyphen is used to show that two independent words are connected and should be treated as one compound or closely related concept. A period marks the end of a sentence in Persian and is hardly different in usage from English; it is also used in abbreviations. A comma in Persian, when used properly as recommended by academic guidelines or those of editors, is not different from the English comma. Quotation marks usually look like: « », and their function is similar to quotation marks in English.
