Interesting Histories: Comma, Dot, Question mark & Exclamation mark
We all use punctuation. Sometimes correctly, but mostly, and you know I am right here, incorrectly. But where did this “punctuation” come from? Why do we even have it? Why do we care about commas and full stops? Many writing systems do not even need them. For example Chinese does not really need punctuation, and ancient Egyptians did just fine without it. Let’s go through some of those common punctuation marks and see where the heck they came from.
Of course it is easiest to start with the comma, it is a mark we all love to hate, as it got some confusing rules behind it. You can put it here, but not there, but if you feel like it you can put it there, but not here, or if you follow that style you can definitely put it over here, but try not to put it over there. And so it goes on and on and on. But it all started so simple, back in the 3rd century BC, when it was used simply to indicate that you need to take a breath when you are reading aloud. The comma (or komma) meant that you need to take a short breath. It was originally invented by Aristophanes of Byzantium, and Aldus Manutius, much later, in 15th century, gave it the modern appearance we all know. The printing press popularized it, making it one of the most important, and confusing, punctuation marks in modern, usually Latin based, grammar. Now the comma has many purposes and it got barely anything to do with reading out loud. It is used to separate clauses in sentences, to break up lists, to format dates, mark decimals and so on and so forth.
Now let’s move onto the full stop, or the dot, now that an easy punctuation mark. Just like its cousin comma, it was introduced by Aristophanes of Byzantium and was used to end a completed expression, or sentence. Except originally it was placed high up, at the top of the line. Slowly it crept down, and when the comma changed its appearance from a simple dot to a… well, comma, it became the full stop we all know and love today. It got a couple of aliases too, such as “period”, “full stop”, or simply “dot”. Outside of its original use to terminate a sentences, it is also used in initials, abbreviation and even mathematics. The dot can be quite handy.
The question mark’s origin is clouded in mystery! Nobody sure where it came from and why it is shaped so weirdly. There is a legend that the question mark took its shape from a cat’s tail back in ancient Egypt. Cats are curious animals, and when they are checking something out they bend their tales. A very interesting story, but sadly back in ancient Egypt nobody used punctuation, although they did love cats. The first form of the question mark can be traced back to medieval texts where it looked like a dot and a lightning (.~). But it did not stick around and in many cases its purpose was quite questionable. Only in 13th century, when publication of books was becoming a major trade, a dot and a lighting became somewhat of a norm, except that the lighting part became more curly. Another theory that the question mark came from the Latin quaestiō (“question”) that was abbreviated as “qo” during the Middle Ages. With time the “q” climbed on top of the “o” and opened up, turning into ?. In the 17th century, with the wide spread of the printing press, the question mark finally took the familiar to us shape. It was slowly adopted by most of the world languages and today it is used all around the globe.
The exclamation mark is a close cousin to the question mark, just like the full stop to the comma. It is widely believed that it came from Latin “io”, which meant “hurray”, an exclamation of joy or wonder. Just like with “qo”, over time the “i” climbed onto the “o” and became !. In 15th century it was introduced into English printing and since then has been used in most Latin and Cyrillic based languages. An interesting side note, manual typewriters did not have a separate key for the exclamation mark until 1970s and were represented with a period and an apostrophe above it. These days the exclamation mark is also used as an warning, for example on road signs or electrical boxes, telling us to watched out for danger or hazards.
So here we go, the four most important punctuation marks — comma, dot, question mark and exclamation mark. They all came from different times and places, but now they work together to tell us what the heck a writer actually meant to say.
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