What is "hypodiastole"

n. A mark ⟨(term ⸒ Translingual)⟩ in late Classical Greek and Byzantine Greek used as a form of interpunct to show two words should be read separately in situations where they might otherwise be confused with an identically-spelled single word.

The hypodiastole ( Greek: , , "lower separation [mark]"), also known as a diastole, was an interpunct developed in late classical and Byzantine Greek texts before the separation of words by spaces was commonplace. In the scripta continua then used, a group of letters might have separate meanings as a single word or as a pair of words. The papyrological hyphen ( enotikon) showed a group of letters should be read together as a single word, while the hypodiastole showed that they should be taken separately. Compare "" ("it is a mind") to "" ("it is an ear"), and "" ("whatever") to "" ("...that...").

The hypodiastole was similar in appearance to the Greek comma and was eventually entirely conflated with it: in Modern Greek, the term ypodiastolī́ ) refers to the comma in its role as a decimal point and words such as are written with standard commas. A separate Unicode point— ISO/IEC 10646 standard (U+2E12) (⸒)—exists for the hypodiastole but is only intended for reproductions of its historical occurrence in Greek texts.