The primary objective of this paper is to establish a generalized framework for pulse-shaping on the delay-Doppler plane. To this end, we classify delay-Doppler pulse-shaping techniques into two types, namely, circular and linear pulse-shaping. This paves the way towards the development of a generalized pulse-shaping framework. Our generalized framework provides the opportunity to compare different pulse-shaping techniques under the same umbrella while bringing new insights into their properties. In particular, our derivations based on this framework reveal that the recently emerged waveform orthogonal delay-Doppler multiplexing modulation (ODDM) is a linear pulse-shaping technique. By presenting ODDM under our generalized framework, we clearly explain the observed staircase behavior of its spectrum which has not been previously reported in the literature. Another contribution of this paper is proposal of a simple out-of-band (OOB) emission reduction technique by inserting a small number of zero-guard (ZG) symbols along the delay dimension of the circularly pulse-shaped signals. Additionally, inserting the zero-guards improves the bit-error-rate (BER) performance of both circular and linear pulse-shaping techniques. Finally, our simulation results confirm the validity of our mathematical derivations, claims and the effectiveness of the ZGs in OOB reduction and BER performance improvement.