Proper name mark


In Chinese writing, a proper name mark is an underline used to mark proper names, such as the names of people, places, dynasties, organizations. The related book name mark indicated by a wavy underline is used to mark the titles of publications or texts.
The proper name mark is rarely used in modern Chinese publications, and the Guillemet is more commonly used to indicate titles. It is occasionally used in Taiwan and Hong Kong in school textbooks. However, in scholarly editions of classical Chinese texts, especially vertically typeset texts, use of both the proper name mark and the book name mark is common, as they help readers avoid misinterpretations of the text.
For example:
Qu Yuan was exiled, and thus composed the Li Sao. Zuo Qiu lost his sight, hence there is the Guo Yu.
Also, consider the sentence "I come from Germany". In Chinese, using the proper name mark, it would be rendered as "我來自。" The name of the country, in this case Germany, is underlined.
This method of recognizing proper names in text is similar to the English use of a capital letter in proper nouns.