I'm wondering about the stylistic differences between 時々and 時時, 個々and 個個 and so on.

I'm starting to use monolingual dictionaries more these days, and they -- certainly the Daijirin -- seem to prefer the second form (full character written twice) in their headwords, which I find surprising.

Also, what do the Japanese call the iteration mark itself? I've seen 踊り字: is that the best word to use for it?

In my experience, 時々 etc. are used outside of dictionaries. Dictionaries like to use the 時時 one for some reason. Can't seem to find just 々 in them though...?

As for 々, I always just type "おなじ" when I want to write it, but edict calls it くりかえし, おなじ、おなじく、のま、どうのじてん(同の字点）

I guess I didn't really help out a whole lot, but that's what i got...

My EPWING 5th Edition Kenkyūsha dictionary doesn't recognise '時時', '個個', etc.

Hmm, I'd not noticed before but you're right that the J-J dictionaries seem to dislike the repeat mark. GG5 (J-E) does use it, though. Wikipedia lists a pile of synonyms for it. The JIS standard name is apparently "繰返し記号".

Also, while I was wandering around wikipedia I found this cool punctuation mark you've probably never heard of: 〽 , the 庵点（いおりてん）.

harhol Wrote:My EPWING 5th Edition Kenkyūsha dictionary doesn't recognise '時時', '個個', etc.

That's quite true - but the monolingual dicts (both 大辞林 and 大辞泉) seem to prefer the 時時 variants, for some reason.

[Katsuo]

記号の読み方辞典. This dictionary is useful for finding names of symbols.

pm215 Wrote:Also, while I was wandering around wikipedia I found this cool punctuation mark you've probably never heard of: 〽 , the 庵点（いおりてん）.

You see it used in Noh and Kabuki texts; that's the only place I've seen it.

From Wikipedia:

Wikipedia Wrote:The repetition mark is not used in every case where two identical characters appear side by side, but only where the repetition itself is etymologically significant. Where a character ends up appearing twice as part of a compound, it is usually written out in full:

民主主義 minshu-shugi — "democracy" (the abbreviated 民主々義 is only occasionally seen)

That's really the only case I can think of where you wouldn't use the iteration mark. Otherwise I would always use it.