The word snoop - Ursula Dubosarsky 2009

Punctuation: Signs & Symbols
Dots and dashes, interrobangs and cat’s claws

Now you know whypunctuation began—but how come we use those particular signs? And where did they get their names and shapes from? Well, after hours of careful snooping, here’s what I managed to find out . . .

Comma, colon: period.

All three of these types of punctuation were given their Greek names by a friendly librarian named Aristophanes, who lived in Byzantium in the second century BC. They were marks on the page, each with a message to the reader.

Comma , meant a short pause.

Comma is Greek for “cutting off.”

Colon : meant a medium-sized pause.

Colon is Greek for “limb” or a verse of a poem.

Period . meant a long pause—that is, a full stop. Period is Greek for “road going around.”

Question mark ?

In the Middles Ages (from around the fifth to the sixteenth century), a squiggle above a period was sometimes used to show that the sentence was a question and that the person speaking should make their voice go up at the end. By the seventh century, it had turned into what we call a question mark. The curly shape may have come from drawing the letter Q—short for the Latin Quaestio,meaning “question.”

Exclamation mark !

In the early days of punctuation, if you were reading out loud and you saw this sign above a period, you were supposed to make your voice sound amazed or surprised, much like we do today. Some people think the sign began as a squashed-up version of the ancient Greek word IO meaning “Oh gosh!” (or something like that), with the I on top and the O underneath. However it came about, it was well in use by the seventh century. At that time it was sometimes known as the “mark of admiration.” (!)

Interrobang

More punctuation marks are being born all the time—just think of all the little signs you use when you’re texting.

But have you ever seen this?

It’s an interrobang—a punctuation mark invented by Martin K. Speckter in 1962. It’s especially for those moments when you want to use a question mark and an exclamation mark all at once. It could certainly be pretty useful for comic book writers!?!?!?

And have you ever heard of a question-comma or an exclamation-comma?

If you open up one of the books about Selby, the fabulous talking dog, chances are you’ll spot one. These were featured in a book by the Australian author Duncan Ball, for those times when you want to use a question mark or an exclamation mark right in the middle of a sentence. Hey ! why not use one yourself? next time you’re writing a story.

Quotation marks “ ”

Quotation marks are used to show that someone is speaking. The kind we have in English today began to be widely used during the eighteenth century. Before that, readers simply understood from the way a sentence was written that someone was speaking, although sometimes the spoken words were underlined.

Apostrophe ’

In English, the apostrophe is used for two things—to show where a letter or letters are missing (such as don’t,for the missing o from “do not”); or to show who owns something (such as the WordSnoop’s umbrella).

The word apostrophe is Greek. In ancient Greek drama, an apostrophe was when an actor turned away from the audience to address someone who wasn’t there. (Perhaps they were at another play?) Anyway, the word came to be associated with the idea of standing in for something that was missing. So, for example, in Old English the letters es were used to show who owned something. Then the e started to be left out, and the apostrophe was put in to stand for that missing e.

Apostrophes are the punctuation mark that people seem to get most excited about—whether they love them or hate them. The Irish writer George Bernard Shaw didn’t like apostrophes at all, and proudly wrote one of his most successful plays, Pygmalion, using as few as possible. But Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,simply adored apostrophes and put in as many as he possibly could. For example, instead of writing can’t(short for “can not”), he would write ca’n’t. It must have taken him quite a while to write things down sometimes—“Sorry, I sha’n’t come to play today. I ca’n’t quite finish this letter . . .”

These days, you’ll notice that sometimes when filling in a form you’re asked to leave out the apostrophes altogether. This is because they can really confuse data entry systems. Lewis Carroll would be heartbroken!