Hi, I'm digitizing a songbook and I'm trying to add proper spacing, capitalization, and punctuation to a paragraph in pinyin.
This is what the book says:
On Wikipedia, it says that each line of a poem should be capitalized, and also that Western commas and periods should be used. So, I changed it to this:
Zhǔ shì wǒ di mù yáng rén, wǒ bì bù quē fá,
Wèi wǒ zài qīng cǎo dì, ān xí zài yáng lán.
Tā lǐng wǒ di líng hún, dào shuǐ biān ān xiē,
Shǐ wǒ zǒu chū mí tú, tuō lí le kǔ nàn;
Shǐ wǒ zǒu chū mí tú, tuō lí le kǔ nàn.
Wikipedia also says that I should sometimes combine syllables to form words, which (as a non-Chinese speaker) I'm not sure how to do, but someone I know should be able to help with that.
That leaves me with two questions:
1) Should Western colons, semi-colons, quotation marks, and parentheses be used, the same as Western periods and commas? Wikipedia says "All other punctuation marks are the same as the ones used in normal texts." Does that mean I should use full-width colons, semi-colons, quotation marks, and parentheses?
2) If I use Western punctuation, should I use Western spacing as well; i.e. should I say:
"Zhè tiáo xīn jiè mìng : yào bǐ cǐ xiāng ài ."
or
"Zhè tiáo xīn jiè mìng: yào bǐ cǐ xiāng ài."
?
Thanks for your help! Sorry for anything that may not be clear; this is my first time posting.
This is what the book says:
On Wikipedia, it says that each line of a poem should be capitalized, and also that Western commas and periods should be used. So, I changed it to this:
Zhǔ shì wǒ di mù yáng rén, wǒ bì bù quē fá,
Wèi wǒ zài qīng cǎo dì, ān xí zài yáng lán.
Tā lǐng wǒ di líng hún, dào shuǐ biān ān xiē,
Shǐ wǒ zǒu chū mí tú, tuō lí le kǔ nàn;
Shǐ wǒ zǒu chū mí tú, tuō lí le kǔ nàn.
Wikipedia also says that I should sometimes combine syllables to form words, which (as a non-Chinese speaker) I'm not sure how to do, but someone I know should be able to help with that.
That leaves me with two questions:
1) Should Western colons, semi-colons, quotation marks, and parentheses be used, the same as Western periods and commas? Wikipedia says "All other punctuation marks are the same as the ones used in normal texts." Does that mean I should use full-width colons, semi-colons, quotation marks, and parentheses?
2) If I use Western punctuation, should I use Western spacing as well; i.e. should I say:
"Zhè tiáo xīn jiè mìng : yào bǐ cǐ xiāng ài ."
or
"Zhè tiáo xīn jiè mìng: yào bǐ cǐ xiāng ài."
?
Thanks for your help! Sorry for anything that may not be clear; this is my first time posting.
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