Japanese Punctuation

Japanese punctuation looks familiar until you look closely. The period is a small hollow circle, the comma leans the other way, quotation is done with corner brackets, and the question mark is optional. Every one of these marks is full-width (全角, zenkaku) — a character-sized glyph that occupies the same square as a kanji, distinct from the narrow ASCII . , ? you type in English. Getting these right is a fast way to make your writing look native instead of translated.

。 — the maru (full stop)

The sentence-ending mark is 。, a small circle called the maru (丸, "circle") or formally kuten (句点). It ends every sentence — statements, commands, and, importantly, questions. A written Japanese question that ends in the particle か is closed with a plain 。, not a question mark.

That second sentence is a genuine question, yet it ends in 。 — because か has already marked it as a question. The circle just closes the sentence like any other. This is the single most surprising thing for English speakers, so it is worth stating flatly: か + 。 is a complete, correct question.

、 — the ten (comma)

The comma is 、, called the ten (点, "dot") or tōten (読点). It looks like a stroke leaning the opposite way from an English comma. Its job overlaps with the English comma, but its logic is looser: the ten marks reading and breath pauses as much as it marks strict clause boundaries. Two writers can comma the same sentence differently and both be correct, because the ten is partly about rhythm — where a reader would naturally pause.

In the second example, the ten falls right after the topic 田中さんは — not because grammar demands it, but because a reader naturally takes a small breath there. English would rarely comma a subject off like that.

「」and 『』 — quotation brackets

Direct speech and quotations use corner brackets: 「 opens and 」 closes. These are called kagi-kakko (鉤括弧, "hook brackets"). Do not use English "curly quotes" — 「」are the standard, on every keyboard and in every book.

The double brackets 『』 (nijū-kagi-kakko) do two jobs: they mark a quote inside a quote, and they mark the titles of books, films, and albums (where English would use italics or underlining).

Here the outer speech sits in 「」and the book title 『ノルウェイの森』 sits in 『』 nested inside it — clean and unambiguous, which is exactly what the two-level bracket system is for.

・ — the nakaguro (middle dot)

The nakaguro (中黒, "middle dot"), ・, is a small centered dot with several uses:

• Separating the parts of a foreign name: ジョン・レノン (John Lennon), アンネ・フランク (Anne Frank). The dot marks where the given name ends and the surname begins, since katakana has no spaces to do it.
• Listing short items: 牛乳・卵・パン (milk, eggs, bread).
• Clarifying boundaries inside a run of katakana that could otherwise be misread.

？ and ！ — real but optional

The question mark ？ and exclamation mark ！ do exist in Japanese, and they are full-width. But they are (informal) — extras borrowed from Western punctuation, not part of the traditional system. In formal and academic writing, questions end in か + 。 and 。 alone carries every sentence.

Where ？ earns its keep is in casual writing and questions that drop か. A rising-intonation question with no か — the kind you text a friend — really does need ？ to signal that it is a question at all:

Without the ？, 元気 would just read as the word "well/healthy," not a question. So the rule is: か-questions can skip ？; か-less casual questions need it. The ！ works the same way — optional, casual, adding emotional punch:

〜 — the wave dash

The wave dash 〜 (波ダッシュ, nami-dasshu) marks ranges — "from X to Y" — and, in casual writing, a drawn-out or sing-song vowel.

In the first, 〜 means "to" in a range (read kara here, or just as a dash). In the second, the trailing 〜 stretches the vowel and softens the tone — a very common (informal) texting flourish.

（ ） and …… — parentheses and other reader marks

Japanese also uses full-width parentheses （ ）, called kakko (括弧). They work much like English parentheses — enclosing asides, glosses, and explanations — but they are character-width glyphs, not the narrow ASCII ( ). One very common use is glossing a reading or a foreign term:

The ellipsis is written as a run of centered dots, almost always doubled to fill two character cells: ……. It marks a trailing-off, a pause, or an unfinished thought, and it is far more frequent in Japanese prose and dialogue than in English — a single …… can carry a whole beat of hesitation or heavy silence.

The colon ： (full-width) appears in labels, times, and ratios, but Japanese leans on it far less than English does — where English writes "Note:" Japanese often just runs the sentence on or uses 、. Treat ： as an occasional tool, not a default.

The full-width point

Everything above is full-width. Your text should contain 。 not ., 、 not ,, ？ not ?, （ ） not ( ). On a Japanese IME these appear automatically in Japanese input mode; the trap is leaving your keyboard in English mode and dropping ASCII marks into Japanese text, which looks jarringly wrong to a native reader. There is even a full-width space 　 (used, for example, between a character's surname and given name in some formal styles), distinct from the ASCII space — though Japanese normally uses no spaces at all.

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

• The full stop is the maru 。, and it closes questions too — か + 。 is a complete question.
• The ten 、 marks breath and reading pauses; its placement is looser and more rhythmic than the English comma.
• Quotation uses corner brackets 「」, nested and title-marking with 『』 — never English quotes.
• The nakaguro ・ separates foreign-name parts and short list items.
• ？ and ！ are (informal) optional extras — needed for か-less casual questions, redundant after か.
• All these marks are full-width; do not drop ASCII . , ? into Japanese text.