Punctuation
		Home > Greek > Unicode > Stories
Language: ENG ELL EPO JBO TLH LAT

Overall, Greek punctuation is the same as Latin script punctuation, and the variation displayed by Latin script languages in their choice of quotation marks. The only variation is displayed in the characters whose function corresponds to the question mark, the semicolon, and (for Classical Greek) the colon.

1. Punctuation shared with Latin

U+021 Exclamation Mark [!]; U+0028 Left Parenthesis [(]; U+0029 Right Parenthesis [)]; U+002C Comma [,]; U+002D Hyphen-Minus [-]; U+002E Full Stop [.]; U+003A Colon [:]; U+2013 En Dash [–]; U+2014 Em Dash [—]; U+2026 Horizontal Ellipsis […]

There is little to remark on in the use of default punctuation, other than the overemotive use of the ellipsis and exclamation mark—shared at least with Italian. (A comment which proves how culturally Australian I am...) The full stop was taken over from Greek by the Romans, as were the middle and high dot initially; the comma appears to have been invented independently in the two scripts in the 9th century (Thompson 1912:60-61). The other shared punctuation—exclamation mark, parentheses, dashes, ellipses, quotation marks—are Renaissance innovations, introduced into Greek from Latin script. (The colon was arguably anticipated several times before in the history of Greek and Latin punctuation, but not in its current function.)

In one word of Modern Greek, and a few more of Byzantine Greek, comma is arguably used as an alphabetic letter rather than punctuation. The hypodiastole was an early symbol indicating word break before space was used for that purpose. The hypodiastole looked like a comma (Thompson 1912:62), so it was inevitable that the same glyph be used for both, once the comma was invented (Thompson 1912:60).

Now, Greek uses spaces regularly to delimit words, and has done so sporadically since at least the 7th century (Thompson 1912:57), and systematically since the invention of printing. If we have spaces, we don't need hypodiastoles. With the exception of Greek indefinite pronouns.

In Classical Greek, the indefinite pronoun "whatever" was thought of as two words: ὅ τι; it is written accordingly in the modern typography of Classical Greek. It was thus distinct from the cognate conjunction ὅτι "that", which is written as one word. Now, if you want to distinguish between the two using a hypodiastole, before the invention of spaces, you would put one in for the former: ὅ,τι, and leave it out in the latter. (You would also put hypodiastole in lots of other places; the classic example is εστι,νους = ἐστὶ νοῦς "it is a mind" vs. εστιν,ους = ἐστὶν οὖς "it is an ear".) But when the time came to put the spaces in, people already felt that ὅ,τι "whatever" was a single word (which it assuredly is in Modern Greek—the distinction between ὅ,τι and ὅτι is now that the latter is unstressed). If "whatever" is a single word, noone wanted to start writing it as two words. So ὅ,τι stayed written as a single word, with no space; the hypodiastole stayed in place, now serving to disambiguate it from the conjunction ὅτι. The hypodiastole is not a punctuating comma in this context, which is why no space appears after it. (In this function, it is like the decimal comma, which is also used in Greece.)

ὅ,τι is the only instance of the hypodiastole in Modern Greek; but the practice is popular with editors of Byzantine texts, who apply it to other indefinites and compounds which Classical Greek treats as two words, but which the scribes treated as single words—particularly when there is potential confusion with single words already in the language. The TLG has the following instances in its corpus:

Ἄρτι δὲ τῆς ὥρας ἐπιστάσης, ἐν ᾗ φυτηκομοῦσαι καὶ ζωγραφοῦσαι τὴν γῆν αἱ τοῦ ἦρος χεῖρες τῇ ποικίλῃ τῆς χλόης βαφῇ πλείστην ταῖς τῶν ἀνθρώπων ὄψεσι τὴν τέρψιν χαρίζονται, ἑτοίμους ὁ βασιλεὺς τὰς τῶν Ῥωμαίων δυνάμεις εἶναι παρεκελεύσατο. βούλεσθαι γὰρ αὐτὸν διαβῆναι πρὸς τὴν Ἀσίαν καὶ πόλεμον ἄρασθαι κατὰ Ὀρχάνου, τοῦ τῆς Βιθυνίας ἡγεμονεύοντος, τά,τε ἄλλα καὶ ὅτι Νίκαιαν τὴν προκαθημένην Βιθυνίας πόλιν κινδυνεύει χειρώσασθαι, διπλῷ πολέμῳ πολιορκῶν, λιμῷ καὶ στρατῷ. (Nicephorus Gregoras, Historia Romana 1.433)

Just as that time was on hand when the hands of Spring, gardening and painting the earth, do give great plesure to people's sight through the varied colours of buds—the Emperor bade that the Roman forces be ready. For he wished to cross over into Asia and wage war against Orhan, ruler of Bithynia and the other parts, and to bring under control the danger to Nicaea, the capital of Bithynia, beseiged in a double war, by plague and army.

Byzantine editors have extended the hypodiastole to τε "and", and other cases of τι "something", to differentiate them from univerbated Classical compounds. As is clear, the practice is not that frequent; and it is unknown in Classics, where the notion of spelling ὅ τι as a single word seems rather disreputable. Informal usage in Modern Greek also forgets the hypodiastole, which is presumably analogous to the travails of the apostrophe in English.

2. Quotation Marks

U+00AB Left-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark [«]; U+00BB Right-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark [»]; U+2015 Horizontal Bar [―]; U+201C Left Double Quotation Mark [“]; U+201D Right Double Quotation Mark [”]; U+201F Double High-Reversed-9 Quotation Mark [‟]; U+2039 Single Left-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark [‹]; U+203A Single Right-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark [›]

As the Unicode Standard notes, quotation marks practice for Classical Greek follows local conventions (which vary greatly from European language to European language, and even within a single language: see Unicode Standard, p. 157—see also Gabor Deak Jahn's survey posted on the Unicode mailing list, with followups). For Modern Greek, the conventions are those of French: guillemets (U+00AB, U+00BB), and quotation dash (U+2015). Haralambous (§1.6.1) reports that the traditional nested quotes are U+201F Double High-Reversed-9 Quotation Mark U+201D Right Double Quotation Mark, and that the combination of U+201F with U+201D is unique in the world's scripts. I have seen U+201C Left Double Quotation Mark paired with U+201D instead, which—given the prevailing cultural hegemony—is not especially surprising. (Unlike French I have not seen single guillemets (U+2039, U+203A) used as nesting quotes.)

Haralambous (§2.2; §1.6.1) has some comments on the spacing of punctuation marks, including quotation marks. Traditionally, from what he says, spacing of punctuation has been complex in Greece; but outside of Agra publishers there is no spacing between quotation marks and text. English Classics typography, at least, does place a small space between double quotes and text, as your nearest Loeb volume will confirm. Given that double quotes look uncomfortably like titlecase breathing marks or breathing marks plus acutes, this is quite sensible.

2.1. Single Quotes

It seems absurd to have to warn people not to conflate diacritics with punctuation; Haralambous, in his Guidelines (§1.8, §1.9), admits as much. But in titlecase contexts, where the diacritics appear to the left of the capital letter, it is exceedingly easy to confuse:

• smooth breathing (e.g. U+1F08 Greek capital Letter Alpha With Psili, Ἀ) and "smart" apostrophe or closing single quote (U+2019 Right Single Quotation Mark: ’Α);
• rough breathing (e.g. U+1F09 Greek capital Letter Alpha With Dasia, Ἁ) and opening single quote: U+2018 Left Single Quotation Mark: ‘Α; or even worse, U+201B Single High-Reversed-9 Quotation Mark: ‛Α—which is identical to the rough breathing. (Fortunately it seems U+201B is only a glyph variant of U+2018—Microsoft also conflates them—and is nowhere used as the default single quote.)

The confusion is especially easy if the Greek is being typed by someone who doesn't know any Greek. (There is extra motivation to do so since the Greek apostrophe is meant to look like a smooth breathing.) Since I have been on the receiving end of such errors in my work at the TLG, I can only concur with Haralambous' warning.

In fact, as the Unicode Standard notes (§7.2), single quotation marks are best avoided with polytonic Greek in general; the risk of confusion with apostrophes and breathings is just too great—not to mention the jarring effect of a single quote in front of a titlecase rough breathing: Ἀπεκρίθη δέ· “Οὗτος ἔφη· ‘Ἁδρόν ἐστι.’”. Ick City. What you want is something more like Ἀπεκρίθη δέ· « Οὗτος ἔφη· “ Ἁδρόν ἐστι. ” »—with the English spacing between double quotes and text.

The quotation practice in Greece, as noted, is to use guillemets; there is no real tradition of distinguishing single and double quotes. Single quotes do surface on occasion as unwelcome imports.

3. Question Mark

U+37E Greek Question Mark [;]

The Latin and the Greek interrogatives appeared at around the same time, the 8th century (Thompson 1912:60-61); they developed independently, which is why they remain different—as is also the case with the semicolon. The Greek mark has ended up identical in shape to the Latin semicolon; and Unicode has taken the inevitable decision that, since they look identical, they are identical, and the semantics can take care of itself ("If the text is Greek, this is an interrogative..."): U+37E canonically decomposes to U+003B Semicolon, which means that the two are not underlyingly differentiated. It's just as well Greek has never attempted to introduce the Latin semicolon into the language.

The Greek quotation mark behaves identically to the normal Latin question mark: it combines with exclamation mark in the same way, especially in comics (Τι;!!), although I am not aware of a ligature equivalent to U+203D Interrobang, ‽.

4. Greek Semicolon

U+387 Greek Ano Teleia [·]

The earliest official system of punctuation, devised by the 3rd century BC scholars of Alexandria who also came up with the Greek accentuation system, used three dots: a high dot (stigme teleia, "final dot") corresponding to our full stop; a low dot (hypostigme, "underdot") corresponding to our semicolon; and a middle dot (stigme mese, "middle dot") corresponding to our comma. This is how Dionysius the Thracian—who first formulated Western notions of syntax—described the scheme:

ΠΕΡῚ ϹΤΙΓΜΗ͂Ϲ   

Ϲτιγμαί εἰϲι τρεῖϲ· τελεία, μέϲη, ὑποϲτιγμή. †καὶ ἡ μὲν τελεία ϲτιγμή ἐϲτι διανοίαϲ ἀπηρτιϲμένηϲ ϲημεῖον, μέϲη δὲ ϲημεῖον πνεύματοϲ ἕνεκεν παραλαμβανόμενον, ὑποϲτιγμὴ δὲ διανοίαϲ μηδέπω ἀπηρτιϲμένηϲ ἀλλ’ ἔτι ἐνδεούϲηϲ ϲημεῖον.

Τίνι διαφέρει ϲτιγμὴ ὑποϲτιγμῆϲ; Χρόνῳ· ἐν μὲν γὰρ τῇ ϲτιγμῇ πολὺ τὸ διάϲτημα, ἐν δὲ τῇ ὑποϲτιγμῇ παντελῶϲ ὀλίγον. (Dionysius Thrax, Ars Grammatica 1.1.7-8)

ON THE DOT

There are three dots: final, middle, underdot. And the final dot is a sign for a complete thought, while the middle is a sign taken up for a breath, and the underdot is a sign for a thought which is not yet complete, but is still wanting.

How is a dot different to an underdot? In duration; for in the dot there is a long pause, while in the underdot it is quite short.

That was the theory; in practice, scribes writing on papyrus used mainly the high dot; the middle dot was used occasionally, but dropped out of use, and was replaced by the comma. From what I can tell from the facsimiles in Thompson (1912), there was an increasing tendency from the 9th century on to use the lower dot as a full stop, but this was not yet universal by the invention of printing. Presumably the Western model then forced the adoption of the lower dot as a full stop in Greek; lower dot as full stop seems to have become regular in the West by the 14th century. In fact, the Modern Greek name for the full stop is τελεία, which is what Dionysius Thrax would have called it—though he put it on the other edge of the line.

We have one further complication in the colon, which in its modern function is a Renaissance innovation. It was adopted in the West, and is used in the same way in Greece. However, it has mostly been avoided in Classics, which prefer to use the upper dot, the Greek semicolon, also in the function of the colon.

This is very confusing, and is about to get even more so; a table may or may not help at this stage:

So one discrepancy between the typesetting of Ancient and Modern Greek is that the latter uses the Western colon, while the former usually conflates it with the Greek semicolon. (Byzantine practice, from what I know, is increasingly to use the colon, falling in line with Modern Greek practice.) While Classical editions do exist with colons, this is not the rule; a superficial look in the TLG shows that colons are used more

• in editions of fragments (reflecting papyrological punctuation—where the colon assuredly did not have its modern role);
• in dictionaries, commentaries and other scholarly writing (where the function of the colon as introducing information has to be clearly reflected in the typography);
• and more obscure authors (where the editor does not feel as beholden to a prior typographical history of the work)

         --- --- --- --- ---
                                 ] ̣ ̣ ̣[     
       ]ρη̣ ̣ ̣ ̣[                               ]μάτιον: ἀμφί μ[οι        
 ἄν]θρωπον ̣[                               ]ητη παρὰ τὴν ξα̣[    
        ] ̣ακηναρ[                               ]ιν ἀμφί μοι αὖτ[ιϲ (Aristophanes, Fragmenta (Austin) 63)

[...] -ling, on either side of me
a man [...] by the [...]
[...] on either side of me again.

   Δημοκρίτου  παίγνια 
   α. τὰ χαλκᾶ χρυσᾶ ποιῆσαι φαίνεσθαι: θεῖον ἄπυρον μετὰ τῆς κρητηρίας μείξας ἔκμασσε.
   β. ὠιὸν ὅμοιον μήλωι γενέσθαι: ζέσας τὸ ὠιὸν χρῖε κρόκωι μείξας μετ’ οἴνου.
   γ. μάγειρον μὴ δύνασθαι τὴν πυρὰν ἀνάψαι: βοτάνην ἀείζωον θὲς αὐτοῦ εἰς τὴν ἑστίαν. (Democritus, Fragmenta 300,19)

Democritus' Tricks
i. To make copper look like gold: Mix native sulfur with chalk and wipe it on.
ii. To make an egg look like an apple: coat the egg in yolk mixed with wine.
iii. To make a cook unable to light a fire: place the herb houseleek in his fireplace.

Χρήματ’ ἔχων πενίην μ’ ὠνείδισας· ἀλλὰ τὰ μέν μοι
   ἔστι, τὰ δ’ ἐργάσομαι θεοῖσιν ἐπευξάμενος:---
‘Πλοῦτε, θεῶν κάλλιστε καὶ ἱμεροέστατε πάντων,
   σὺν σοὶ καὶ κακὸς ὢν γίνεται ἐσθλὸς ἀνήρ. (Theognis, Elegiae 1.1115-1118)

You who have money mocked me as a pauper; but what I don't have,
   I will earn, praying to the gods:
"Plutus [God of Money], most beautiful of the gods and most charming of all,
   with you by his side even an evil man turns good."

Though the Greek name imposed by ELOT, Ano Teleia, literally means "upper dot", usual typographical practice has been to make it a middle dot, both within and outside Greece. (My subjective impression is that within Greece the dot is a little on the high side, and in Classics a little on the low side; but I'm finding that exceedingly hard to confirm.) Accordingly the canonical decomposition of U+0387 is to U+00B7 Middle Dot. (The conflation is at least as old as Latin-7.) This is reflected in Unicode fonts; even if the glyph for U+00B7 could meaningfully be kept distinct from U+0387, it hasn't been—all fonts available to me have their Ano Teleia as a middle rather than high dot. (Some, such as Cardo, have it quite low indeed.)

There has been some objection to the conflation, including by Jukka Korpella and HR-Net ("Believe it or not, the Greek Stardards Organisation (ELOT) forgot to include the greek semicolon ('ano teleia') in ELOT928 / ISO-8859-7"). (The Latin-7 standard initially refers only to middle dot, although the 1999 edition does explicitly mention "ano teleia". It did not help that some Latin-7 fonts treated the middle dot as a bullet rather than a semicolon.) In comments on the Latin-7 standard, the US representative to the ISO has also queried the conflation.

The conflation is a problem if you want to have both middle and upper dots in Greek (reflecting papyrological practice); and the TLG has accordingly recently proposed the Ano Stigme (a true upper dot) to be distinct from the Ano Teleia. Dots are notorious in Unicode for having more subtle semantic shades than Unicoders can be bothered with (see Ken Whistler's cri de coeur at the end of a posting on a Hebrew dot). This means the Ano Stigme may not be accepted, but conflation with an existing upper dot in the standard encouraged instead.

The semicolon is not as commonly used in Greek as it is in Western European languages, so it is not as easy to find examples of its use—particularly in the more informal usage online.

Moreover, if you transliterate your Greek into Latin online, and decide to keep ; as your question mark (as happens occasionally), there's a real problem of what you transliterate the Greek semicolon as. My colleague George Baloglou, notorious for keeping his transliteration on a visual rather than phonetic or keymapping model, uses ^ to this end:

H akatamaxhth auth le3h emfavizetai cthv deuteph kiolas ceipa tou umvou, kai m' ekave va dw thv Omhpikh glwcca me allo blemma^ bebaiws "cfupov" = "actpagalos", evw h piza "tav" chmaivei "lentos", "makpus", blene kai "tavhleghs 8avatos" = "apgo8phvhtos, makpocuptos 8avatos" (Oducceia B 100). (Hellas Mailing List, October 18, 2001)

Η ακαταμάχητη αυτή λέξη [τανίσφυρος] εμφανίζεται στην δεύτερη κιόλας σειρά του ύμνου, και μ' έκανε να δω την Ομηρική γλώσσα με άλλο βλέμμα· βεβαίως «σφυρόν» = «αστράγαλος», ενώ η ρίζα «ταν» σημαίνει «λεπτός», «μακρύς», βλέπε και «τανηλεγής θάνατος» = «αργοθρήνητος, μακρόσυρτος θάνατος» (Οδύσσεια Β 100)

That irresistable word [τανίσφυρος] appears already in the second verse of the hymn, and made me look at Homeric Greek with a new perspective; of course σφυρόν = "ankle", while the stem ταν means "thin", "long", see also τανηλεγής θάνατος = "slowly-lamented, drawn-out death" (Odyssey 2.100)

5. Papyrological Punctuation

U+35C Combining Double Breve Below [ ͜ ]; U+203F Undertie [‿]; U+2056 Three Dot Punctuation [⁖]; U+2058 Four Dot Punctuation [⁘]; U+2059 Five Dot Punctuation [⁙]; U+205A Two Dot Punctuation [⁚]; U+205D Tricolon [⁝]; U+205E Vertical Four Dots [⁞]; U+2E12 Hypodiastole [⸒]

As already noted in the discussion on heta, Greek as written on papyri did not use spaces to delimit words. Where this was felt to be essential (which would only be on rare occasions in literary papyri), two occasional punctuation signs could be deployed: the hypodiastole as a word divider, the hyphen (or enotikon, "uniter") as a word non-divider. Normally editors leave out these signs in their editions, since they use spaces; but where a text is corrupt beyond repair, and the editors need to reproduce the text exactly as it is on the papyrus, they reproduce the ancient punctuation. The Combining Double Breve Below and the Undertie can both be used to represent the hyphen, depending on whether one wants the sign to be spacing or not. The Hypodiastole is intended for the papyrological instances of the symbol; when used within normal Byzantine or Modern text, as described above, the comma is always used instead.

We have already seen the fun and games of upper, middle, and lower dot in papyri; both papyri and inscriptions also used combinations of multiple dots as punctuation of various kinds -- in the case of inscriptions, usually as word dividers (just like the hyphen, sometimes optionally, sometimes obligatorily). The combination included:

• a double dot (Two Dot Punctuation), often used to indicate the end of a sentence or a change of speaker, which is typographically distinguished in editions from the normal Roman colon by being made taller;
• a triple dot (Tricolon);
• a quadruple dot (Four Dot Punctuation or Vertical Four Dots);
• a quintuple dot (Five Dot Punctuation), which also doubled as the pentonkion (a symbol for five ounces, which was also a 5 ounce silver coin).

I am not familiar with U+2056 Three Dot Punctuation, which unlike the other multiple dot punctuations did not come from a TLG proposal; but even if a Greek had not come up with the idea of using three dots in a triangle as punctuation, no doubt someone else did.

6. Editorial Signs

U+3F9 Greek Capital Lunate Sigma Symbol [Ϲ]; U+3FD Greek Reversed Lunate Sigma Symbol [Ͻ]; U+3FE Greek Capital Dotted Lunate Sigma Symbol [Ͼ]; U+3FF Greek Capital Reversed Dotted Lunate Sigma Symbol [Ͽ]; U+2022 Bullet [•]; U+203B Reference Mark [※]; U+205B Four Dot Mark [⁛]; U+205C Dotted Cross [⁜]; U+2E0E Editorial Coronis [⸎]; U+2E0F Paragraphos [⸏]; U+2E10 Forked Paragraphos [⸐]; U+2E11 Reversed Forked Paragraphos [⸑]; U+2E13 Dotted Obelos [⸓]; U+2E14 Downwards Ancora [⸔]; U+2E15 Upwards Ancora [⸕]; U+2E16 Dotted Right-Pointing Angle [⸖]

The text of the Iliad and the Odyssey may date from the 8th century BC, but the text wasn't settled until the 6th, and the version of the works that we have was established by Aristarchus of Samothrace, whose edition dates from the second century BC. Because we only have his version of Homer, we know very little about any variation in the text in the preceding six centuries. So what Aristarchus himself indicated about the textual variation he found in Homer is immensely important to our understanding of the text.

Aristarchus did not use an apparatus criticus like we would these days, listing variant readings in the footnotes. Instead, he used a series of marginal symbols, to indicate what he thought of particular verses. These signs were reproduced in the more authoritative manuscripts of Homer, and turn up in the TLG encoded text; this is why the TLG recommended those not already covered by existing codepoints for encoding in Unicode in November 2003; the signs were adopted in Unicode 4.1, March 2005.

Other literary papyri also used editorial signs, some of them overlapping with Aristarchus, and the most common of them were also included in the TLG proposal. For convenience, I list the Aristarchean and other symbols and their usages below; more complete documentation is given in the TLG Beta Code Manual and the 2001 draft proposal, and the major reference is:

• McNamee, K. 2002. Sigla and Select Marginalia in Greek Literary Papyri. (Papyrologica Bruxellensia 26) Brussels: Fondation egyptologique reine Elisabeth.

Aristarchean signs

Unicode Codepoint		Beta Code	Meaning	Comments
U+3FD Greek Reversed Lunate Sigma Symbol	Ͻ	#10	"This line is out of place."	Greek term is Antisigma (since it is a reversed lunate sigma)
U+3FE Greek Dotted Lunate Sigma Symbol	Ͼ	#16	"Move the line(s) after the antisigma periestigmenon to the spot marked with sigma periestigmenon."	Greek term is Sigma Periestigmenon (which just means dotted sigma).
U+3FF Greek Reversed Dotted Lunate Sigma Symbol	Ͽ	#11		Greek term is Antisigma Periestigmenon (which just means dotted reverse sigma).
U+203B Reference Mark	※	#13	"Swap the location of this line with the line marked by obelus."	Greek term is Asteriskos.
U+2E16 Dotted Right-Pointing Angle	⸖	#14	"My edition differs in this line from Zenobius'."	Greek term is Diple Periestigmene (dotted diple).
U+2013 En Dash	–	#12	"This line is spurious" (or combined with asteriskos: see above).	Greek term is Obelos. Hence the term (rare in English, frequent in Greek) obelize, meaning "mark as spurious; dismiss".
U+003E Greater-Than Sign	>	#15	"See my commentary."	Greek term is Diple.
U+2022 Bullet	•	%11	"This line is suspect."

Other signs

⁛ Ἐκ προσαγωγῆς τοῦ πραιπ(οσί)τ(ου) Ἰω(άννου) κ(αὶ) γραμ(ματικοῦ) τοῦ κτήτορο(ς) γενομέν(ης) κ(α)τ(ὰ) τὴν ἀρχ(ὴν) τοῦ ὀκτω(βρίου) μην(ὸς) τῆς ηʹ ἰνδ(ικτιῶνος) ἤτ(οι)·
    Εἰκὼ(ν) ἀρ(γυρὰ) διάχρ(υσος) ὁ ἅγιο(ς) Θεόδωρ(ος).

☞ Of what the praepositus and secretary of the owner John brought forward on the beginning of October on the 8th year of the indiction, namely: a silver gold-plated icon of St Theodore... (Four Dot Mark: Michael Attaleiates, Diataxis; l. 1200)

... μ̣(ετ)ὰ (τὸ τ)ο̣ῦτον φρονῆσαι  
ἐφρόνη̣σα“ καὶ „μετὰ τὸ τοῦτον
περιπατῆσαι ἐκάθι(σ)α“. Οὐ γὰρ⁜
..αυτ..■α̣ι̣ ἔστιν τὰ ὡ(μ)οιω‐
μένα ο(ἷο)ν „(μ)ετὰ (δὲ) τοῦτο ἐφρό‐
νησα ἢ ἀνέστην“.

"After he considered, I considered" and "After he walked, I sat". ☞ For they are not [...] what are compared, such as "but after that, I considered or I got up." (Dotted Cross: Chrysippus, Fragmenta Logica et Physica, 298, Col8)

The use of diple to mark quotations, appearing as it does at the start of the line, anticipates the modern email convention of using > . If you get >> marking a different kind of quotation (here the text being commented on, rather than any old quotation), you get something eerily familiar, like this:

>>“διδάξετέ με, ἐγὼ δὲ κωφ[εύσω]. εἴ
>> τι πεπλάνημαι, φράσε[τέ] μοι.”
⌊καὶ τοῦτο μετὰ πλείστης [ὅση]ς πρα‐
ότητος ὁ ἅγιος παιδεύε[ι αὐ]τούς,
πῶς χρήσωνται λόγοις [πρ]ὸς τοὺς
ἐν περιστάσει λέγων· δι[δάσκ]ει(ν)
ὀφείλετε, οὐκ ἐλέγχει<ν> ἀ[καίρω]ς,
εἰ μὴ καὶ τοῦτο πρὸς πα[ίδευ]σι(ν)
ποιεῖ κατὰ τὸ λεγόμεν[ον ὑπὸ] Παύ‐
> λου· “ἔλεγξον, ἐπιτίμησο[ν, π]αρα‐  
> κάλεσον”⌋. ἔτι δὲ καὶ μετ[ριότ]ητος
χαρακτὴρ ὑπάρχων ἀπαι[τεῖ] καὶ
παρὰ τοιούτων λόγον διδ[ασ]καλί‐
ας, μή που εὕρῃ τι χρήσιμον. εἰ δὲ
οὕτω ποιεῖ ὁ ἅγιος, οὐ δεῖ τινα ὑ‐
περηφανεύεσθαι καὶ ὀκνεῖν πα‐
ρ’ ὁτουοῦν παιδεύεσθαι.
>> “ἀλλ’ ὡς ἔοικεν, φαῦλα ἀληθινοῦ 
>> ῥήματα.” ἔλεγχός ἐστιν οὗτος
κατὰ τῶν ὑπερορώντων τ<ὰ>ς
τῶν δικαίων ἢ ἄλλως ὀρθῶν ἀ(ν)‐
θρώπων γνώμας, ὅπερ ὑπερή‐
φανοι ποιεῖν εἰώθασιν, οὐ γνώ‐
μῃ καὶ βίῳ προαιρέσει ὀρθῇ προσ‐
έχοντες, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἔξωθεν κα‐
>τὰ τ[ὸ] εἰρημένον· “πλούσιος ἐλά‐
>λη[σ]εν καὶ πάντες ἐσίγησαν
> καὶ ᾔνεσαν τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ, 
> πτωχὸς ἐλάλησ<ε>ν καὶ εἶπαν· ‘τίς
> ο[ὗτο]ς;’.” καὶ δῆλα ταῦτα ἐκ τῆς ἐ‐
ν̣[αργ]είας. δῆλον δὲ ὅτι ἀληθινὸς
ἦ[ν ὁ] μακάριος, <ὃ> καὶ θ(εὸ)ς μαρτυρεῖ.
τὸ δὲ “φαῦλα” ἀντὶ τοῦ εὐτελῆ, λε‐
γο[μ]ένου ποτὲ τοῦ φαύλου ἀντὶ
>> κ[ακο]ῦ. “οὐ γὰρ παρ’ ὑμῶν ἰ‐
>>σχ[ὺ]ν αἰτοῦμαι.” ⌊τοῦτο σύμφω‐
> ν[ον] τοῖς ἄνω, ἔνθα ἔλεγεν· “τί
>γά[ρ]; μή τι ὑμᾶς ᾔτησα;” διὰ μέ‐
> σου εἰρημένο<υ> τοῦ· “διδάξετέ
> με”⌋ ἕως τοῦ· “ἀλλ’ ὡς ἔοικεν”. καὶ
α̣[ὐτο]ῖς οὖν ἐκείνην τὴν διάνοι‐
α[ν ἐφαρ]μοστέον.

>> Teach me, and I will hold my tongue: and
>> cause me to understand wherein I have erred. (Job 6:24)
And with great meekness the holy man teaches them
how to use their words to those in trouble,
saying: you should teach, not scold inopportunely,
unless you do that too in order to teach, as
Paul said:
> reprove, rebuke, exhort (2 Tim 4:2)
And being of a modest character he demands
words of instruction from such men, in case
he might find something useful in them. But if
the holy man does so, one should not be proud and
lazy, but receive instruction from whomever.
>> How forcible are right words! (Job 6:25)
This is a rebuke of those who overlook the opinions
of just or otherwise correct people, as the proud
are wont to do, who do not pay attention to the correct
choice in opinion and life, but to the externals, according
to the saying:
> When a rich man speaketh, every man holdeth his tongue,
> and, look, what he saith, they extol it to the clouds:
> but if the poor man speak, they say, What fellow is this? (Sir 13:23)
And these things are palpably obvious. And it is clear that
the blessed man spoke the truth, which God also witnesses.
And he uses 'forceful' instead of 'weak', as 'forceful' used
to be used instead of 'evil'.
>> but what doth your arguing reprove? (Job 6:25)
This is consistent with what went before, where he said
> Did I say, Bring unto me? (Job 6:22)
and between
> Teach me (Job 6:24)
and
>How forceful (Job 6:24)
And they should put that insight to practice.
(Didymus the Blind, Commentary on Job, p. 183)