Middle dot

A middle dot is one of several types of dots that occur in the middle of a character space, i.e.,

· (· or ·)
． (．)
‧ (‧): bullet
· (&___?__): it appears identical to middot in most text editors, but not in Chinese MS Word, where it has a large space to the right.

The Georgian language uses · (middot) as comma.

In Chinese, partition sign (間隔號 jian1 ge2 hao4) -- ． -- is used to separate the given name and the family name of Westerners, or unsinicized or desinicized minority Chinese ethnic peoples, for example, 威廉．莎士比亞 (Weilian．Shashibiya) is the transliteration of "William Shakespeare", and the partition sign is inserted in between the characters of "William" and those of "Shakespeare". Because Japanese and Korean names, like Chinese names, have the family name before the given name, they do not need a partition mark.

In Catalan is used always between two "l" (l·l) and represents the sound of two "l" that are together but in two diffrent syllabs. The reason of the use of de punt volat (flying dot) is that "ll" represents de sound λ.

The partition sign is also used to separate book title and chapter title when they are mentioned consecutively (with book title first, then chapter).

In mathematics, a small middle dot can be used to represent the product, for example x·y for the product of x and y.