Punctuation

Are you part of the school dictation generation? Do you dread the semi-colon? Do you think parentheses are long essays written by your Mum and Dad? Maybe you have read or written the infamous “Let’s eat, Grandma”/”Let’s eat Grandma”! (the latter would suggest that your propensity for cannibalistic senicide is, euphemistically put, concerning). Have you actually considered how punctuation came about, its full usage, or what to avoid?

The Latin word punctus (from the Medieval Latin punctuare) refers to ‘pointing’, especially in a Psalm. The word was known in English in the middle of the 16 th century in Hebrew texts, being reserved for the insertion of vowel points (marks placed near consonants to indicate preceding or following vowels).

Since the late 16th century, the theory and practice of punctuation have varied between two main schools of thought:

• the elocutionary school followed late medieval practice, treating points or stops as indications of the pauses of various lengths that might be observed by a reader

• the syntactic school was less arbitrary as a guide to the grammatical construction of sentences. Pauses in speech and breaks in syntax tend to coincide; although writers are now agreed that the main purpose of punctuation is to clarify the grammar of a text, they also require it to take account of the speed and rhythm of actual speech

Syntactic punctuation should clarify the construction of sentences. Good punctuation may be of many kinds: to take two extreme examples, Henry James would be unintelligible without his numerous commas, but Ernest Hemingway seldom needs any stop but the period. In poetry, in which the elocutionary aspect of punctuation is still important, or when the style is close to actual speech, punctuation is much at the author’s discretion.

Punctuation in Greek and Latin to 1600

The punctuation now used with English and other western European languages is derived ultimately from the punctuation used with Greek and Latin during the classical period. In the oldest Greek literary texts, a horizontal line called the paragraphos was placed under the beginning of a line in which a new topic was introduced.

Aristophanes marked the end of the short section (called a comma) by a point after the middle of its last letter, that of the longer section (colon) by a point after the bottom of the letter, and that of the longest section (periodos) by a point after the top of the letter.

The colon is not used in Greek, and the semicolon is represented by a high point. Quotation marks and the exclamation mark were added more recently.

In almost all Roman inscriptions, points were used to separate words. In the oldest Latin documents and books, dating from the end of the 1st century BC, words were divided by points, and a change of topic was sometimes indicated by paragraphing. The ends of sentences were marked, if at all, by only a gap or by an occasional point.

During the 7th and 8th centuries, which saw the transition from majuscule to minuscule handwriting, scribes began to separate words. To mark sentences, a space at the end became the rule; an enlarged letter, often a majuscule, generally stood at the beginning of sentences and paragraphs alike. The ends of sentences were often marked by a group of two or three marks, one of which might be a comma.

There was an improvement of spelling and punctuation in Biblical and liturgical manuscripts. Single interior stops in the form of points or commas and final groups of stops continued in use, but they were joined by the mark known as punctus elevatus () and by the question mark (punctus interrogativus).

In the later Middle Ages, it was especially the Cistercian, Dominican, and Carthusian orders and the Brethren of the Common Life who troubled to preserve a mode of punctuation, admirably adapted to the constant reading aloud, in church and refectory. The hyphen, to mark words divided at the ends of lines, appeared late in the 10th century.

The first printed texts of the Bible and the liturgy are carefully punctuated on the inflectional principle. The profusion of points and virgules in the English books of  William Caxton pays remarkably little attention to syntax. Parentheses appeared about 1500. During the 15th century, some English legal documents were already being written without punctuation; British and American lawyers still use extremely light punctuation in the hope of avoiding legal issues.

The virgule, originally placed high, sank to the baseline and developed a curve— it turned into a modern comma. By the end of the 17th century, the various marks had received their modern names, and the exclamation mark, quotation marks, and the dash had been added to the system.

Punctuation in English since 1600

The punctuation of Elizabethan drama and of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) was almost wholly elocutionary. It was Ben Jonson, in his English Grammar, who first recommended syntactic punctuation in England. The system of punctuation now used by writers of English has been complete since the 17th century.

Three of its most important components are:

• the space left blank between words

• the indentation of the first line of a new paragraph

• the uppercase, or capital, letter written at the beginning of a sentence and at the beginning of a proper name or a title

Marks of punctuation are as follows:

• the end of a grammatically complete sentence is marked by a full point, full stop, or period

• the period may also be used to mark abbreviations

• the colon (:), which was once used like a full point and was followed by an uppercase letter, now serves mainly to indicate the beginning of a list, summary, or quotation

• the semicolon (;) ranks halfway between a comma and a full point. It may be substituted for a period between two grammatically complete sentences that are closely connected in sense; in a long or complicated sentence, it may precede a conjunction (such as or, and, or but).

• the comma (,) is the “lightest” of the four basic stops. It may be used to separate the elements of a series

Other punctuation marks used in modern English include parentheses, which serve, like a pair of commas, to isolate a word or phrase; question, exclamation, and quotation marks; the hyphen; and the apostrophe (standardised only in the 19th century).

So, there you have it … you are enlightened or maybe not; however, would you like to ‘peruse’ the list below for some lighter reading (“to read or not to read” [that is the question!])?

I hope you noticed features in the preceding two lines.

Finally …

… here are some of the most common punctuation mistakes and how to avoid them:

1. Extraneous apostrophes

The problem: putting apostrophes where they do not belong
→ Five pound’s off/MOT’s

How to avoid: just add s for plurals and ‘s for possessives
→ That is my Dad’s car

2. Unnecessary quotation marks

The problem: the use of quotation marks when nothing is being quoted

How to avoid: use bold or italicised font for emphasis

3. Missing commas

The problem: without commas, sentences are blocks of text without any breaks

How to avoid: read aloud, then insert commas when taking pauses or ‘changing gears’

4. Too many commas

The problem: the opposite of the above

→ I went to the store, but they were closed, so I got in my car, turned my radio on, backed out, and then went home

How to avoid: your eyes are the best judge of overuse. If you think you have too many in a single sentence, consider replacing a comma with a period to create separate sentences

5. Excess exclamation

The problem: too many exclamation points in a body of work overwhelms the reader and devalues each individual exclamation point

→ Our products are the best! They really work! Get yours today!

How to avoid: Save them only for the big points and for the ends of paragraphs

6. It’s versus Its

The problem: it’s all too easy to misuse this word because its rules are different

How to avoid: remember that it’s is short for “it is” or “it has,” whereas the word its, as in “The dog lost its bone,” is possessive even though it doesn’t contain an apostrophe. A simple test is to see if you can substitute the word with “it is” or “it has”

7. The Oxford comma

The problem: The Oxford comma, which is the comma before the final item in a list, is standard in

British writing, but there is not consistent usage

→ My favourite foods are pizza, spaghetti, and steak (with)

→ My favourite foods are pizza, spaghetti and steak (without)

How to avoid: be consistent

8. Hyphen (-) versus Dash (–)

The Problem:  All horizontal lines in text are not created equal

→ Our products are built with high-grade steel (hyphen)

→ I prefer chocolate milk – it’s tastier than plain milk. But I really like strawberry milk – although the pink colour bothers me (dash)

How to avoid: use a hyphen to combine two words to create a single idea; it’s most frequently used to combine two words into an adjective. Use a dash to indicate that you are moving onto a separate idea

9. Semi-colon versus colon

The problem: semi-colons are often misused, particularly where a colon should be used

→ I brought three things; a toothbrush, a blanket, and a pillow (example to avoid)

→ I am glad to be going on vacation; I need the rest from work (correct example)

How to avoid: use a colon if you want to make a list of items. If you want to separate two related but distinct thoughts, use a semi-colon

Fun bite

• Eat your dinner Eat, you’re dinner!

• Twenty-five pound bills Twenty five-pound bills

• I want to thank my parents, Jill and God I want to thank my parents, Jill, and God

• I’m sorry I love you I’m sorry; I love you

• This is a man, eating chicken This is a man-eating chicken

• Hot-water bottle Hot water bottle

• I find inspiration in cooking my family and my dog I find inspiration in cooking, my family, and my dog

• A woman without her man is nothing A woman: without her, man is nothing

The following link is light-hearted and an enjoyable ‘insight’ into phonetic punctuation by the brilliant Victor Borge – 1909-2000 (Danish actor, comedian, and pianist), in which he read a passage from a book and added exaggerated sound effects to stand for most of the main punctuation marks, such as periods, commas, and exclamation marks.

NB his Inflationary Language, in which he added one to every number or homophone of a number in the words he spoke. For example: “once upon a time” becomes “twice upon a time”, “wonderful” becomes “twoderful”, “forehead” becomes “fivehead”, “anyone for tennis” becomes “anytwo five elevennis”, “I ate a tenderloin with my fork, and so on and so forth” becomes “I nined an elevenderloin with my fivek, and so on and so fifth”.

Phonetic punctuation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPc0aijY2o4

Inflationary language [scroll to 1:40] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuDTzIVFsi0&t=29s

Sources/acknowledgements:

• Britannica.com

• Shiloh Scott - Digital Marketing Manager for Walsworth

• Curtis Newbold from The Visual Communication Guy