I am currently reading an early story by Tanizaki Junichiro in Japanese. I
have come across both the hiragana く and ぐ written twice the size they usually
are, taking up the same amount of space on the page as two characters. Is
there any significance in this?

These include words such as ひい **く** と and いろ **く** の注文, where the character
in bold is written at twice the height as normal.

Any help would be most appreciated (^-^)
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2012-05-15T17:34:26.230
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2012-05-15T18:04:17.403
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grammar meaning etymology history
What is the significance of a large く character in literary texts?
It's a [repetition mark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iteration_mark#Kana) or
`くの字点` (for its similarity to the character く, as you noted).

> い  
>  ろ  
>  〳  
>  〵  
>  の  
>  注  
>  文

It's only used in vertical text, and repeats over two or more characters,
which for your examples results in `ひいひいと` and `いろいろの注文`.

There is also a single-kana repetition mark `ゝ` (which is the kana equivalent
of the kanji repetition mark `々`), but just like the multi-character version,
it's no longer used in modern Japanese.

I don't want to retype the whole Wikipedia article, so do click on that link
;)
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2012-05-15T18:00:57.627
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answer