句读 (jùdòu): punctuation (in classical Chine…

Meanings

1 punctuation (in classical Chinese)
2 phrasing and pausing in a text
3 where to break a sentence

Characters

句

pause (special reading; usually dú = to read)

Examples

古文没有标点,读书要先学会断句读。

Gǔwén méiyǒu biāodiǎn, dúshū yào xiān xuéhuì duàn jùdòu.

Classical Chinese had no punctuation; before reading, you first had to learn to mark sentence breaks.

韩愈说"句读之不知"是学习的第一道难关。

Hán Yù shuō "jùdòu zhī bù zhī" shì xuéxí de dì-yī dào nánguān.

Han Yu said 'not knowing句读' is the first hurdle of learning.

Tips

history

Before modern punctuation arrived in the 20th century, classical Chinese ran without any marks. Scholars manually inserted small dots — 句 marked a complete sentence, 读 (read dòu here) marked a within-sentence pause. Mastering 句读 was a basic literacy skill.

mistakes

Read 读 as dòu, not dú — it's a special reading kept only in this term and a few classical contexts.