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Concept
Punctuation
Summary
Punctuation marks are marks indicating how a piece of written text should be read (silently or aloud) and, consequently, understood. The oldest known examples of punctuation marks were found in the Mesha Stele from 9th century BC, consisting of points between the words and horizontal strokes between sections. The alphabet-based writing begun with no spaces, no capitalization, no vowels (see abjad), and with only a few punctuation marks, as it was mostly aimed at recording business transactions. Only with the Greek playwrights (such as Euripides and Aristophanes) ends of sentences begun to be marked to help actors know when to make a pause during performances. Punctuation includes space between words and the other, historically or currently used, signs.
By the 19th century, the punctuation marks were used hierarchically in terms of their weight. Six marks, proposed in 1966 by the French author Hervé Bazin, could be seen as predecessors of emoticons and emojis.
Meaning of a text can be changed substantially, although in rare cases, with different punctuation, such as in "woman, without her man, is nothing" (emphasizing the importance of men to women), when written "woman: without her, man is nothing" (emphasizing the importance of women to men), instead. Similar change in meaning can be achieved in spoken forms of most languages by using various elements of speech; such as, suprasegmentals. The rules of punctuation vary with language, location, register, and time. Most recently, in online chat and text messages punctuation is used only tachygraphically.
Punctuation marks, especially spacing, were not needed in logographic or syllabic (such as Chinese and Mayan script) texts because disambiguation and emphasis could be communicated by employing a separate written form distinct from the spoken form of the language. Ancient Chinese classical texts were transmitted without punctuation. However, many Warring States period bamboo texts contain the symbols and indicating the end of a chapter and full stop, respectively.
Official source
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