Scriptio continua ("Continuous script" in Latin) is a classical style of writing without spaces between words or sentences, with all the text in upper case, and with no punctuation, like this:

• NEQVEPORROQVISQVAMESTQVIDOLOREMIPSVMQVIADOLORSITAMETCONSECTETVRADIPISCIVELIT

Which in normal modern style is:

• Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci uelit…
• ‘Nobody likes pain for its own sake, or looks for it and wants to have it, just because it is pain…’

(Text from Cicero's De finibus bonorum et malorum)

This style was often found in Greek manuscripts. It is used currently in Thai, other Southeast Asian abugidas, and in languages that use Chinese characters (Chinese and Japanese) though with sentence breaks.

Here is an example of a normal Chinese sentence, then what it would look like with spaces between words, then a pinyin transcription (in which words are normally divided), and finally an English translation:

• 北京在中国北方；广州在中国南方。
• 北京  在  中国  北方；  广州  在  中国  南方。
• Beijing is in Northern China; Guangzhou is in Southern China.

Modern Chinese differs from ancient scriptio continua in that it does at least use punctuation, although this was borrowed from the West only about a century ago. Before this, the only forms of punctuation found in Chinese writings were punctuations to denote quotes, proper nouns, and emphasis.

See also

• Boustrophedon
• Codex Sinaiticus

Writing systems

scriptio continua