English Punctuation through the Ages
Punctuation can be defined as all the marks such as question mark, exclamation mark, quotation marks, period, comma, apostrophe, colon, semicolon, dash, and brackets/parentheses that are used in many languages’ writing texts to separate sentences, phrases and clauses in order to clarify their true meanings. No one can deny that without these marks both writers and readers would be lost and quite confused about the written language in front of them. Specifically, English punctuation marks have hidden origins, different uses and major importance.
Punctuation marks play an important role in improving the written communication process. Most modern punctuation symbols have Greek or Latin roots. Many of them …show more content…
At that time, the reader was the only one to figure out where each sentence began or where it did end. However, this was not seen as a problem for people at that time. In addition, during the official elections in both Greek and Rome, people debated to support their own points of views via a persuasive speech. But they have to go over the speech before presenting it to others. In fact, what happened is that a bystander read a document instead of one of the elected officials and a writer named Aulus Gellius complained about him because he did not understand the meanings and felt that the words were pronounced incorrectly …show more content…
After that, semicolons had slowly spread across Europe countries, as it appeared in London in 1568 (Collins). By that, semicolons had appeared in a 1609 edition of Shakespeare's sonnets, and also in a 1612 edition of John Donne's works. Then, by the late of the 18th century a researcher called Paul Bruthiaux wrote that the semicolon had been accepted by the British and European writers (Keller). Subsequently, in 1848 a critic called Edgar Allan Poe had complained about the popularity using of the semicolons. By 1865, a grammarian called Justin Brenan noticed the rejection of using semicolons as he said, “The semicolon has been gradually disappearing, not only from newspapers, but from books-insomuch that I believe instances could now be produced, of entire pages without a single semicolon.” Since that time this punctuation mark has been neglected day by day. As there is a study made in 1995 founded that the average of using semicolons in texts has been decreased from 68.1 semicolons per thousand words to just 17.7 between the 18th and 19th centuries
Punctuation can be defined as all the marks such as question mark, exclamation mark, quotation marks, period, comma, apostrophe, colon, semicolon, dash, and brackets/parentheses that are used in many languages’ writing texts to separate sentences, phrases and clauses in order to clarify their true meanings. No one can deny that without these marks both writers and readers would be lost and quite confused about the written language in front of them. Specifically, English punctuation marks have hidden origins, different uses and major importance.
Punctuation marks play an important role in improving the written communication process. Most modern punctuation symbols have Greek or Latin roots. Many of them …show more content…
At that time, the reader was the only one to figure out where each sentence began or where it did end. However, this was not seen as a problem for people at that time. In addition, during the official elections in both Greek and Rome, people debated to support their own points of views via a persuasive speech. But they have to go over the speech before presenting it to others. In fact, what happened is that a bystander read a document instead of one of the elected officials and a writer named Aulus Gellius complained about him because he did not understand the meanings and felt that the words were pronounced incorrectly …show more content…
After that, semicolons had slowly spread across Europe countries, as it appeared in London in 1568 (Collins). By that, semicolons had appeared in a 1609 edition of Shakespeare's sonnets, and also in a 1612 edition of John Donne's works. Then, by the late of the 18th century a researcher called Paul Bruthiaux wrote that the semicolon had been accepted by the British and European writers (Keller). Subsequently, in 1848 a critic called Edgar Allan Poe had complained about the popularity using of the semicolons. By 1865, a grammarian called Justin Brenan noticed the rejection of using semicolons as he said, “The semicolon has been gradually disappearing, not only from newspapers, but from books-insomuch that I believe instances could now be produced, of entire pages without a single semicolon.” Since that time this punctuation mark has been neglected day by day. As there is a study made in 1995 founded that the average of using semicolons in texts has been decreased from 68.1 semicolons per thousand words to just 17.7 between the 18th and 19th centuries