Japanese punctuation what follows proves, clarifies, explains, or simply enumerates elements of what is referred to before. Although not a native Japanese punctuation mark, the colon is sometimes used, especially in academic writing. As in English, the colon is commonly used in Japanese to indicate time (, instead of or ) or for lists ( Day/time: March 3, 4:05pm). The is usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or high volume, and generally marks the end of a sentence. A sentence ending in an exclamation mark is either an actual exclamation ("Wow!", "Boo!"), a command ("Stop!"), or is
Reference mark Reference mark The reference mark or reference symbol (※) is a punctuation mark used in Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) writing. It is used to call attention to an important sentence or thought, like a prologue or footnote. In contrast to the European asterisk, it is not used for connecting a specific place in the text directly to the footnote, but rather for notes directly before or after the passage. Its Japanese name, (; , , ), refers to the similarity of the character to the for "rice" (). Its Korean name, ' (), literally means "reference mark". It is