Editing Glossing Rules (section)

=== The period and the colon in expert mode ===
<div id="Punctuation_period_expert">
; (2a") The period and the colon in expert mode
: If one chooses to mark affixes, clitics, reduplications and/or infixes by “-”,“=”, “~”, and “&lt;&nbsp;&gt;”, respectively, 
: – elements in a gloss should only be joined by a colon “:” as a last resort for difficult cases like e.g. transfixation, and 
: – elements in a gloss should only be joined by a period “.”, if these are inseparably fused in the object language word, i.e. if they are part of a ''Portmanteau'' morpheme. <ref>Cf. Lehmann (2004: R21).</ref>
</div>

; Example:
{| {{Glossing table}}
|-
| ''Vorgestern'' || ''bin'' || ''ich'' || ''aus'' || ''einem'' || ''Kurzurlaub'' || ''zurückgekommen''.
|-
| Vorgestern || bin || ich || aus || ein-em || Kurz=urlaub || zurück=gekommen.
|-
| the_day_before_yesterday || '''be.PRS.1SG''' || '''1SG.NOM''' || out || a-'''M.DAT''' || short=vacation(M)['''SG.DAT'''] || back=com'''e:PTCP.PRF'''
|}
{{Translation|‘I came back from a short vacation the day before yesterday.’}}

However, the encoder may of course choose to use the colon “:” instead of any of the other indications of separable morphemes (“-”, “=”, “&lt;&nbsp;&gt;”, “~”, “\”) – but not for ''Portmanteau'' morphemes. But remember that, differently to the cases of “-”, “=”, “&lt;&nbsp;&gt;”, and “~”, the colon “:” in the gloss is not supposed to match with a colon “:” in the Glossing transliteration line. 

Note that a separate glossing transcription line is not necessary if the encoder uses only periods “.”, colons “:”, backslashes “\”, parentheses “(&nbsp;)”, and square brackets “[&nbsp;]”.

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