Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 August 1883 — Punctuation. [ARTICLE]

Punctuation.

Punctation is an art, and one that has been learned in comparatively modem times. The Greeks did not know the meaning of it, and left no space between their words. The Romans put up a kind of division without any apparent method. Up to the end of the fifteenth century only tire colon and the comma were introduced, and the latter at that time only as a perpendicular figure. We are indebted to Aldus Manutius, an eminent printer, for the comma as we have it and in 1790_ he introduced the semi-colon into printing, and published a set of rules for the guidance of writers. It is not known by whom notes of interrogation or exclamation Were first used, but inverted commas (“) were brought into common use by a French printer to supersede the use of italics but the English adopted' them to specify quotation.