Pistemerkintöjen
Pistemerkintöjen is a Finnish term describing a family of marks formed by dots or dot-like symbols that function as punctuation, annotations, or typographic markers in writing systems and digital text. The concept covers signs whose defining feature is a point and whose purpose is to organize, separate, or indicate relationships between elements in a line or block of text.
Common examples include the interpunct (·), a middle dot used to separate items or syllables in some
Historically, dot-like punctuation appears in ancient manuscripts as punctus marks to indicate pauses. Medieval and early
Usage today is context-dependent. In continuous prose, dots mark sentence boundaries; in lists, bullets provide structure;
See also: punctuation, typography, Unicode punctuation blocks, list markers, diacritic marks.