Diple (textual symbol)
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- This article is about textual symbol. For musical instrument, see Diple.
Diple (meaning double, referring to the two lines in the mark >) was used in margins to draw attetntion to something in text. It is sometimes also called antilambda because the sign reminds of Greek capital letter lambda (Λ) turned upon its side. In some ways its usage was similar to modern day quotation marks and the so called French quotation marks (») are derived from it.
Isidore remarks in his Etymologiae (I.XXI.13) [1] that diple was used to mark the quotations from Bible. He also talks about diple peri strichon (or sticon) which was used to draw attention separate concepts and diple periestigmene what was used to mark dubious passages (in this respect its usage was similar to obelos). Diple obolismene was used according to Isidore to separate sentences in comedies and tragedies, so it's usage was similar to that of paragraphos.
