English Enslaved? The History of Punctuation Quiz

Answer: DIDENGLISHWORDSONCEROAMFREEUNRESTRAINEDBYPUNCTUATION

Ancient Greek writing contained no punctuation, not even spaces to signal the end of words. All letters were capitals. The most ancient Greek inscriptions utilize boustrophedon: alternating the reading direction of the lines, first left to right then right to left. The ability to correctly insert pauses and accents was considered to be part of the craft of reading.

Answer: Periodos

The word "peri-odos", literally "around the path", denoted a circuit. The longest pause followed the completion of the circuit. The word "kolon" designated a limb but also a metrical unit of verse. A kolon called for a pause of intermediate length. The noun "Komma" was derived from the verb "koptein" meaning to cut off. The "cut off" piece called for the shortest pause.

Aristophanes of Byzantium was not related to Aristophanes, the noteworthy 5th century BC playwright.

Answer: Interpunct

The word "punctuation" derives from "punctum" meaning a small indentation or prick. Interpuncts were the prick marks placed between words. The use of interpuncts became increasingly less common and more haphazard in later Latin writing. This is attributed to the increasing popularity of "scriptio continua", writing without separations between words, patterned after Greek. Although spaces are not generally placed between words, some of the tablets recovered from the Roman fort Vindolanda in northern England evidence words separated by spaces.

The ancient Greeks used a horizontal line, the paragraphos, to separate sections of text. The pilcrow is a symbol used in medieval times to indicate the start of a new thought. The pilcrow has become a modern symbol to denote paragraphs and is used as a control character in Microsoft Word. Strangely, the word "pilcrow" is not included in Microsoft Word's dictionary. A caesuras is an audible pause in a line of verse.

Answer: The elevation (height) of the point relative to nearby letters

It was the height of the point that signaled the length of the pause.

In the 4th century AD, Donatus revived Aristophanes' point system. Since these original punctuation marks were points, the process of placing them was called "pointing". As the point's function was more to assist in the reading of the text than to clarify meaning, it's not surprising that points are found more frequently in manuscripts that would have been most frequently read, namely liturgical manuscripts. The school that Alcuin of York established at Charlemagne's request in the 8th century is credited with indoctrinating scribes to more consistently point their manuscripts.

Answer: Virgula suspensiva

The Virgula suspensiva, literally "small twig or rod hanging" evolved into our modern comma in function as well as name. The punctus interrogativus was used beginning in the 8th century AD. It consisted of a period (full stop) topped by a squiggle and cued an upward inflection in voice to signal a question.

It is speculated that the punctus interrogativus was little used because questions could be easily recognized from the syntax. The punctus interrogativus went entirely out of use and our modern question mark was developed independently.

The punctus versus looked like a small seven over a period and was used to mark the end of a sentence. The caesuras is discussed above.

Answer: All of these

Punctuation was first and foremost a means to facilitate reading written words. However, the utility of punctuation marks for clarifying meaning and sentence structure began to be appreciated. With the advent of the printing press came the production of increasing numbers of books intended to be read silently to oneself.

It also became desirable to standardize the marks used. The handwriting, that is to say the printing, was on the wall. It was only a matter of time before authors would be hounded into adhering to arbitrary standards for dots and "little twigs" before printers would consider their manuscripts suitable for publication.

Answer: Ben Jonson

(Warning: Although the factual information contained in this interesting information section is accurate, the quiz maker's tongue is currently in his cheek.) With publication of his book "English Grammar", Ben Jonson became the first prominent English writer to embrace syntactical punctuation use, albeit posthumously. It is, perhaps, suspicious that it was not published until 23 years after being written and after Mr. Jonson had left this mortal coil. Francis Bacon did write "Essayes" utilizing syntactical punctuation. Shakespeare's use of enjambment, the continuation of a sentence onto the next line with an expected pause, was innovative; but the Bard confined his use of punctuation to an elocutionary purpose.

The havoc Jonson wrought on our till then, as yet, unenslaved English language can be seen in the sentence he wrote to justify his calumnious knavery. Jonson writes: "For, whereas our breath is by nature so short, that we cannot continue without a stay to speake long together; it was thought necessarie, as well as for the speakers ease, as for the plainer deliverance of the things spoken, to invent this meanes, whereby men pausing a pretty while, the whole speech might never the worse be understood."

Is it any wonder that we are now coerced into commas, that editors' avarice for apostrophes afflicts us, that we are inundated with en-dashes, that we are hell-hounded with hyphens; are we not even surfeited with semi-colons? To paraphrase the immortal Bard, "If you punct me, do I not bleed?"

Source of Ben Jonson facts: Punctuation in English since 1600
http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~wilkins/writing/Resources/essays/punctuation_hist.html
[Tuesday, 16-Nov-2004 10:21:43 EST]
Edited by: wilkins@mps.ohio-state.edu on Saturday, 27-Mar-1999 18:15:52 EST

Answer: Dexter added a page of punctuation marks and suggested his readers scatter them as they wished.

Timothy Dexter was a New England merchant who made a fortune buying certificates of indebtedness during the American War of Independence. His 24-page pamphlet "A Pickle for the Knowing Ones" featured creative spelling in addition to an absence of punctuation.

His first edition sold out and he included a page of punctuation for disgruntled readers in his second edition along with the following instructions, "fourder mister printer the Nowing ones complane of my book the fust edition had no stops I put in A nuf here and thay may peper and solt it as they please". Even a fourth edition of this little gem, published more than 40 years after the first edition, is now selling for over $200 American dollars.

Answer: Joy

Not only the exclamation point but also quotation marks, the apostrophe, the question mark, and the dash were added in the 17th and 18th centuries. A profusion of rules of usage followed in the wake of these additions. Some divergence of usage among English speaking nations was inevitable. FunTrivia embraces the diversity, permitting both American and British usage (and I presume Commonwealth usage as well). Thus, an American like myself can take advantage of the more sensible British usage regarding quotation marks while retaining my Americanized spelling.

Although the Latin "io" means joy, there is also an Io of myth. Jupiter changed Io into a cow to keep his wife Juno from catching him in a compromising position. Although Io did eventually return to human form to become the first Queen of Egypt, perhaps the "holy cow" answer could be considered to have some merit.

Answer: Interrobang

The interrobang combines a question mark and exclamation point to avoid the necessity of ending sentences with "?!". The question comma and exclamation comma combine the question mark and exclamation point respectively with a comma. They received a patent in 2004.

The website "Despair.com" has a humorous parody in which they claim trademark rights for the "frownie" :-( . Or is it a parody?!