3. Punctuation in SERA

3.1. What is Glyph Mapping?

Originally SERA mappings for Ge'ez punctuation followed their nearest functional equivalent in Latin. Such a choice is logical to minimize the key strokes required of a typist, and should be intuitive from the like functionality.

Later mappings were added based on the similarity of Latin punctuation's appearance (the glyph value) to that of Ethiopic punctuation. Glyph mapping allow documents to maintain a similar ``look'' as they would in native form. This result has a strong esthetic appeal and is common place in email exchanges.

3.1.1. Functional Mapping

Ge'ez punctuation mappings following Latin functional equivalency are:

    ,     Ethiopic Comma
    ;     Ethiopic Semicolon 
    :     Ethiopic Colon     
    .     Ethiopic Stylized Dot   
    ?     Ethiopic Stylized Question Mark   
   `?     Ethiopic 3-Dot Question Mark

3.1.2. Glyph Mapping

Ge'ez punctuation that can be assembled from similar looking Latin punctuation may be given by:

   wordspace       :    :
   preface colon   :   :-
   colon           :   -:
   period          :   ::
   quotation       :   << >>
   paragraph break :   :|: 
   sarcasm mark    :   `!

3.2. Latin punctuation in Ethiopic zones

Latin punctuation that coincides with Ethiopic equivalents will require the escape character preceding the punctuation. Any number of punctuation characters following \ will be transcribed as Latin from non-Latin zones. Latin punctuation presented here as it would appear in non-Latin zones.

    \,     Latin Comma.
    \;     Latin Semicolon.
    \:     Latin Colon.
    \.     Latin Full Stop.
    \'     Latin Apostrophe.
    \`     Latin Backquote.

    \\     Sends "\" from either zone
    \:;'.  Transcribes Latin punctuations in list following \
           The list may be of length 1 (above) or greater.

    '     is always ignored 
    `     is ignored unless a special vowel, consonant, or punctuation follows
              -- s,S,h,g,q,e,u/U,i,a/A,E,I,o/O,?

3.3. Ge'ez punctuation in Latin (or other) script zones

Previous standards for SERA did define Ge'ez punctuation escapes outside of Fidel text zones. This was a bit obtrusive upon the transliteration standards for other scripts. In the 1997 standard for SERA this practice was eliminated from the standard. Applying Ge'ez punctuation in a non-Ethiopic text stream now requires a full switch into and out of the Ethiopic as per:

    ...this is a Roman script with a Ge'ez full stop\ ::\