![]() ![]() In later Middle English manuscripts, when layout comes to be used to punctuate verse, it was often considered to be all the punctuation that was necessary. Such "prose-like" poetry also tended to be punctuated in much the same way that prose was, except that the ends of poetic lines (and, in Old English verse, the ends of half-lines) were usually marked with some sort of punctuation symbol. Early English poetry ( Beowulf, for instance) is written as prose, filling each writing line to the margin before beginning a new line. The use of layout (putting each "line" of verse on a new line, using indentations, etc.) to punctuate verse is an invention of the later Middle Ages (probably introduced to the English by the French, from whom the English learned rhyming and stanzaic forms, these being characteristics of French verse forms, not of native English verse). Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century punctuation practice varies considerably, but tends to be "heavy" current "light" punctuation is largely the invention of H. An interesting early discussion of the nature of modern punctuation can be found in Ben Jonson's English Grammar (composed ca. Among the earliest works showing "modern" punctuation is Francis Bacon's Essays. Modern punctuation, designed to clarify syntactic structures rather than to indicate breathings, is largely a Renaissance invention, developing during the first generations of the printing press, and codified in the eighteenth century (about the same time that capitalization and spelling became fixed in more or less their current form). Generally, manuscripts tend to be more lightly and less consistently pointed than printed books (and with the exception of the punctus, virgule, and the blank space, almost all of our modern marks of punctuation have come into use only since the thirteenth century). However, as Parkes's studies show, much can be learned about scribal practices by studying the punctuation used in a manuscript. There is little literature on medieval punctuation, partly because there is so much evidence which needs to be studied, and partly because editors of texts have considered the effort needed to be a waste (since usually the pointing is not authorial anyway). Furthermore, manuscript pointing may be added by anyone at any time: it might be authorial, intended to clarify the author's intended meaning, or added by a scribe or a corrector, and some manuscripts show considerable punctuation added at various times by various readers as part of their response to the contents. ․ Elements which may have a similar syntactic function or convey similar meaning, and which are punctuated in one context, need not be punctuated in another when the context ensures that confusion is not likely to arise" (pp. Parkes, in his article on "Pause and Effect" in Medieval Eloquence (later expanded into a book, Pause and Effect), warns that there is little consistency in scribal choices of when and how to point a passage: "Medieval scribes and correctors punctuate when confusion is likely to arise (if their Latin is sufficient to recognize the fact) and do not always punctuate where confusion is not likely to arise, even when they are concerned with the sententia literae. ![]() Punctuation / "pointing": the word "punctuation" is derived from the Latin word "punctus," translated "point" punctuation is literally the use of "points," and, until the sixteenth century or so, the English word for punctuation was "pointing." Pointing was originally done in liturgical manuscripts as an aid in reading aloud, especially by those whose knowledge of the language which they were reading might be less than perfect thus, pointing for reading aloud tends to correspond quite closely to marking "pauses for breath," and it may, in fact, owe much to musical notation for "breaths." It also tends to be much more thorough in Biblical and liturgical manuscripts (from which readings aloud were done regularly in churches and monasteries) than in secular texts. You are here: > Main Page > Course Notes > Paleography: Punctuation ![]() ![]() Manuscript Studies: Paleography: Punctuation ![]()
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