PUNCTUATION ( L. punet uat io, from pit twt uu re, puncture, to pierce). In writing or printing, the use of certain marks called points, to separate sentences and parts of sentences. Its most important office is that of preventing am biguity or obscurity. More inelusively, its ob ject is to indicate correct grouping of the words, as an all to quick perception of their relation ships• and so of their meaning.
In Greek inscriptions and manuscripts gener ally, there is no attempt to separate the words, and in early times no system of punctuation was employed. It is true that in some archaic in scriptions columns of dots are occasionally found separating words, but they have no reference to the pauses, and cannot properly be called punc tuation. However, even by the end of the fourth century B.C., readers found it convenient to indi cate pauses by arbitrary signs, though the pub lished copies of books seem to have known no division of words or use of diacritical signs. The development of an organized system of punctua tion seems to have occurred at Alexandria. To judge from the papyri, the earliest mark is used to indicate a new paragraph. Here a slight space is left in the line (later a large initial is sometimes found), while below the line in which the pause occurs is drawn a short horizontal line (the so-called raociypaqsoc, paragraphos) which sometimes takes the form of a wedge. This sign is used in the plays to indicate a change of speaker, and in the papyrus of Bacchylides to mark in the odes the strophe. antistrophe, and epode. Another method was the employment of a dot or small circle, and we are told that Aris tarchus of Byzantium systematized this use, so that the point high above the line indicated a full stop, that low on the line a lesser pause, like a semicolon, and the point in the Middle a comma. This system, however, though accepted by the grammarians, does not appear in the papyri, where the point is usually placed high, whatever its value.
In general it may be said that these and other diacritical signs seem to have been used chiefly in editions of the poets, whose dialectic' and archaic forms presented greater difficulties to the ordinary reader. Other systems, some of great complexity. were employed by later gram marians and editors, but did not come into general use. The Greek manuscripts of later date show a system more like that now employed.
About the ninth century the comma appears to denote the slight pause, while the high dot ( • ) indicates a colon or semicolon, and the full stop is denoted by a larger dot or double clot and a space. A little later the interrogation point ( ; ). appears, though not very frequently. The Latin grammarians adopted the punctuation by dots from the Greeks, but seemingly modified the system slightly so as to give the middle dot the middle value, and the lower the smallest. The oldest manuscripts, however, show no punctua tion at all, and the later uncials show great variety, and no recognized system. In the seventh century we find the equivalent to a comma, the semicolon with its modern value, and a full stop expressed by a more complex sign. In the Carolingian and later manuscripts the system is somewhat altered, and approaches more closely that in common use, as the comma is introduced, and an inverted semicolon to indi cate a pause between comma and semicolon, while a sign of interrogation also appears. Quo tation marks in various forms are found early in both Greek and Latin manuscripts.
All modern languages agree practically in the use of the same points, applied according to prin ciples laid clown by Aldus Manutius (1450-1515), but since his time, of course, extensively devel oped. Differences in detail between languages rest mainly on different methods of thought and con struction, though some peculiarities are arbitrary. In Spanish a question or an exclamation has its especial mark at the beginning as well as at the end. French has a peculiar set of quotation marks, and German uses commas in normal position at the beginning and inverted commas at the close of a quotation. But the leading principles are uni versal. Punctuation in English is legitimately subject in many respects to personal choice, since many sentences, when not very long and of simple construction, are equally clear whether points are or are not freely used. Liberal in sertion of points is called close punctuation, and omission of all but those absolutely necessary is known as open punctuation. The latter practice probably prevails at present in the best English usage, although the only statement that may be made with certainty in this respect is that usage is not uniform.