句读

句讀

jùdòu

noun

Meanings

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

Characters

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 bùzhī " shì xuéxí de dìyī dào nánguān.

Han Yu said 'not knowing where to break a sentence' 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.

Stroke Order

句 jù

读 dú