Danda


In Indic scripts, the daṇḍa is a punctuation mark. The grapheme consists of a single vertical stroke.

Use

The daṇḍa marks the end of a sentence or line, comparable to a full stop as commonly used in the Latin alphabet, and is used together with Western punctuation in Hindi and Nepali.
The daṇḍa and double daṇḍa are the only punctuation used in Sanskrit texts. No distinct punctuation is used to mark questions or exclamations, which must be inferred from other aspects of the sentence.
In metrical texts, a double daṇḍa is used to delimit verses, and a single daṇḍa to delimit a pada, line, or semi-verse. In prose, the double daṇḍa is used to mark the end of a paragraph, a story, or section.

Computer encoding

encodes the daṇḍas as and. The Unicode standard recommends using this character also in other Indic scripts, like Bengali, Telugu, Oriya, and others. Encoding it separately for every Indic script was proposed, but has been accepted.
Danda and similar characters are encoded separately for some scripts in which its appearance or use is significantly different from the Devanagari one. These include forms with adornments, such as the Rgya Gram Shad.
ISCII encoded daṇḍa at 0xEA.