Punctuation marks

The punctuation marks are all those orthographic signs that, in a written text, delimit the phrases, nominal and verbal and sentence statements, establish the syntactic-logical hierarchy of the propositions in order to structure the sentence. text, order the ideas and rank them as main and secondary.

Punctuation varies by language and writing style; however, the differences in style do not prevent one from talking about certain minimum standards in the use of signs. From a regulatory point of view, some uses are considered incorrect in certain languages.

However, beyond any norm, punctuation marks also make up the architecture of written thought. In this sense, and as in poetry, for more than a century, there are no exact rules to regulate the correct use of signs in scores, both narrative and poetic. In terms of principles and parameters, punctuation marks would become part of the language parameters, ^{[citation needed]} and, consequently, they are placed in a process of constant evolution and are variable, so they may depend on other factors.

If the ultimate purpose is communication and the communicative factors or situation, intentionality, etc., it could be paradoxical to find spelling licenses that do not respect the conventional way of writing that, however, express the concepts and internal rhythms, otherwise invisible.

History

Early writing systems were logographic or syllabic, for example Chinese and Mayan writing, which do not necessarily require punctuation, especially space. This is because the entire morpheme or word is usually grouped together in a single glyph, so the spacing doesn't help as much in distinguishing where one word ends and the other begins. Disambiguation and emphasis can easily be communicated without punctuation by using a written form with slightly different phraseology than one would use when speaking. However, it is currently not possible for any language to convey all the nuance and emphasis of a speech act in written form, no matter how well punctuation is used.

Ancient classical Chinese texts were handed down without punctuation. However, many bamboo texts from the Warring States period contain the symbols ⟨└⟩ and ⟨▄⟩ indicating the end of a chapter and full stop, respectively. By the Song dynasty, the addition of punctuation to texts by scholars to aid comprehension became common.

The oldest alphabetic script (Phoenician, Hebrew and others of the same family) had no capital letters, no spaces, no vowels (see abjad) and few punctuation marks. This worked as long as the text was restricted to a limited range of subjects (for example, the script used to record business transactions). Punctuation is historically an aid to reading aloud.

The oldest known document that uses punctuation is the Mesha Stele (IX century BCE): it uses dots between words and horizontal strokes between sections as punctuation.

Western Antiquity

Most of the texts continued to be written in continuous script, that is, without any separation between words. However, the Greeks, around the V century B.C. C., sporadically used punctuation marks consisting of vertically arranged dots, usually two (dicolon) or three (tricolon) to aid in reading texts aloud. Greek playwrights like Euripides and Aristophanes used symbols to distinguish the ends of sentences in written drama: this essentially helped the cast of the play know when to stop. After 200 B.C. C., the Greeks used the system of Aristophanes of Byzantium (called theseis) of a single point (punctus) placed at different heights to mark speeches in rhetorical divisions:

• hypostigm - - a punctus low on the base line to mark a komma (unit smaller than a clause)
• stigm - mésē - a punctus at medium height to mark a clause (kōlon)
• stigm - teleia - a punctus high to mark a prayer (periods)

In addition, the Greeks used paragraphs (or gamma) to mark the beginning of sentences, double marginals to mark quotations, and a koronis to indicate the end of main sections.

The Romans (c. I century B.C.) also occasionally used symbols to indicate pauses, but theseis Greek, called distinctiones, prevailed in the IV century AD. C. as reported by Aelius Donatus and Isidore of Seville (VII century century). In addition, the texts were sometimes presented per capitula, with each sentence on its own separate line. Diples (angle brackets) were used, but by the end of the period these often degenerated into comma-shaped marks.

Medieval

Punctuation was greatly developed when large numbers of copies of the Bible began to be produced. These were designed to be read aloud, so copyists began to introduce a number of marks to aid the reader, including indentation, various punctuation marks (diple, paragraph, simplex ductus) and an early version of initial capitals (litterae notabiliores). Jerome and his colleagues, who made a Latin translation of the Bible, the Vulgate (c. AD 400), used a design system based on established practices to teach the speeches of Demosthenes and Cicero. Under his per cola et commata design, each unit of meaning was indented and given its own line. This layout was used solely for Biblical manuscripts during the 5th to 9th centuries, but was abandoned in favor of punctuation.

In the seventh and eighth centuries, Irish and Anglo-Saxon scribes, whose native languages were not derived from Latin, added more visual cues to make texts more intelligible. Irish scribes introduced the practice of hyphenation. Similarly, the island scribes adopted the system of distinctiones while adapting it for a minuscule hyphen (to be more prominent) by using not a different height but a different number of marks, aligned horizontally (or a few times triangularly) to signify the value of a pause: one for a smaller pause, two for a medium pause, and three for a longer pause. The most common were the punctus, a comma-shaped mark and a 7-shaped mark (comma positura), which are often used in combination. The same marks could be used in the margin to mark citations.

At the end of the 8th century a different system arose in France under the Carolingian dynasty. The positions, which originally indicated how the voice should be modulated when singing the liturgy, migrated to any text intended to be read aloud, and later to all manuscripts. The position first came to England in the late X century, probably during the Benedictine reform movement, but was not adopted until after the Norman conquest. The original positions were the punctus, punctus elevatus, punctus versus and punctus interrogativus, but a fifth symbol, the punctus flexus, was added in the 18th century. X to indicate a pause of one value between the punctus and the punctus elevatus. Late 11th century or early XII, the punctus versus disappeared and was replaced by the simple punctus (now with two different values).

The Late Middle Ages saw the addition of the suspensive virgula (slash or slash with a midpoint) which was often used in conjunction with the punctus for different types of pauses. Direct quotations were marked with marginal disciples, as in antiquity, but since at least the 12th century scribes also began to put diples (sometimes doubles) inside the text column.

Age of the printing press

The amount of printed material and its readership began to increase after the invention of movable type in Europe in the 1450s. As writer and publisher Lynne Truss explained, "The rise of printing in the 14th and 14th centuries XV meant that a standard scoring system was urgently required". Printed books, whose letters were uniform, could be read much faster than manuscripts. Speed reading, or reading aloud, did not allow time to analyze sentence structures. This increase in speed led to the increased use and eventually standardization of punctuation, which showed the relationships of words to one another: where one sentence ends and another begins, for example.

The introduction of a standard system of punctuation has also been attributed to the Venetian printers Aldus Manutius and his grandson. They are credited with popularizing the practice of ending sentences with a colon or full stop (period), inventing the semicolon, making occasional use of parentheses, and creating the modern comma by lowering the virgula. In 1566 Aldus Manutius the Younger was able to state that the main object of punctuation was clarification of syntax.

By the 19th century, punctuation in the Western world had evolved to classify marks hierarchically, in terms of weight.

Cecil Hartley's poem identifies their relative values:

The stop points, with truth, the time of pause

A sentence is required in each clause. In every coma, stop while counting; In point and coma, two is the quantity; The 2 points require the time of three;

Point four, according to wise men, agree.

The use of punctuation was not standardized until after the invention of printing. According to the 1885 edition of The American Printer, the importance of punctuation was noted in various children's sayings, such as:

Carlos the First walked and spoke Half an hour after his head was cut.

With a semicolon and a comma added, it reads:

Carlos the First walked and spoke; Half an hour later, his head was cut.

In a handbook of typography from the 19th century, Thomas MacKellar writes:

Shortly after the invention of the printing press, the need for pauses or pauses in prayers for the guidance of the reader produced the colon and the full point. In the time process, the comma was added, which was then simply a perpendicular line, provided to the body of the letter. These three points were the only ones used until the end of the centuryXVWhen Aldo Manuccio gave a better form to the coma and added the point and coma; the coma denotes the shortest pause, the point and eat then the two points and the full point that ends the prayer. Signs of interrogation and admiration were introduced many years later.

Typewriters and Electronic Communication

The introduction of electrical telegraphy with a limited set of transmission codes and typewriters with a limited set of keys subtly influenced scoring. For example, curly quotes and apostrophes were split into two characters (' and "). The hyphen, minus sign, and multi-width hyphens were broken into a single character (-), sometimes repeated to represent an em dash. The spaces of different widths available to professional typewriters were generally replaced by a single full-character-width space, with monospaced typefaces. In some cases, a typewriter keyboard did not include an exclamation point (!), but was improvised by superimposing an apostrophe and a period; the original Morse code did not have an exclamation point.

These simplifications carried over into digital writing, with teleprinters and the ASCII character set supporting essentially the same characters as typewriters. HTML's treatment of whitespace discouraged the practice (in English prose) of putting two full spaces after a period, since a single or double space would appear the same on the screen. (Some style guides now discourage double spaces, and some electronic writing tools, including Wikipedia software, automatically collapse double spaces to single.) The full traditional set of typesetting tools became available with the advent of more sophisticated desktop publishing and word processors. Despite the widespread adoption of character sets like Unicode that allow traditional typesetting punctuation to be used, formats such as text messages tend to use the simplified ASCII style of punctuation, with the addition of new non-type characters. text, like emoji. Informal SMS-like text tends to drop punctuation when it's not needed, even with forms that would be considered errors in more formal writing.

In the computer age, punctuation characters have been recycled for use in programming languages and URLs. Due to its use in email and Twitter handles, the at sign (@) went from being an obscure character used mainly by sellers of bulk goods (10 pounds at $2.00 per pound), to a very common character in Common use. The tilde (~), which in movable type was only used in combination with vowels, for mechanical reasons ended up as a separate key on mechanical typewriters, and as with @, it has been put to an entirely new use.

The main punctuation marks are the period, comma, semicolon, colon, quotation marks, parentheses, question marks, exclamation marks, ellipses, and hyphens.

See quotation marks for under, latin, Spanish, or angle quotes.

List of punctuation marks in Spanish

Point

The point (.) is the punctuation mark that is placed at the end of grammatical statements and sentences in Spanish, and also in most languages written with the Latin alphabet; is written without leaving a space with the character that precedes, but leaving a space with the character that follows, unless that character is a closing character. There are three kinds of point: full stop, full stop, and full stop. Generally, it indicates a descending intonation.

Point and followed

Separate sentences within a paragraph. It means that it continues writing after the point; the first letter written in this case will be capitalized. For example: «History of Spain. The discovery of America". It is called full period, a more logical and recommendable name than the also usual followed period.

Point and side

Separates two paragraphs of different content within the text. Then you have to start writing on a different line. To follow the rules you must start with a capital letter. It is called point and aside, although in some areas of America it is called point apart.

Endpoint

It is always placed at the end, closing a text or statement. The denomination full stop, created by analogy with the correct full stop and full stop, is not correct.

The period is also used to indicate that the previous word is an abbreviation. In this case, write the abbreviation followed by the point and continue writing as usual. This last class of point does not apply to certain abbreviations such as cardinal points, acronyms or measures, which are considered symbols.

Eat

The comma (,) is a punctuation mark that indicates a brief pause within the sentence. It is written without leaving a space with the character that precedes it, but leaving a space with the character that follows it. It is used to separate the members of an enumeration or sequence, whether they are words or phrases, except those that are preceded by one of the conjunctions y, e, o , u, or ni. For example:

Mary came home, did her homework, dined and went to bed.

My house has furniture, tables and four beds.

There are tendencies that admit its use to separate two independent members of a sentence, whether or not there is a conjunction between them, as long as they are truly independent; Well, if not, we would be in the previous case:

The soldiers greeted, the people applauded, and the children did not stop singing.

It is also used to delimit or isolate a clarification or paragraph (incidental words or sentences):

Nacho, my cousin, just got his first job.

Conjunctive or adverbial locutions, regardless of their position, are preceded and followed by a comma, such as: in effect, that is, finally, therefore.

Semicolon

The semicolon (;) is used to join two related sentences into a single sentence:

• Mary was sorry for the test. + Mary will have to study more. = Mary was sorry for the test; she will have to study more.
• It's raining a lot. + We can't walk. = It's raining a lot; we can't walk.

Usually it can be replaced by constructions of the type:

• Mary was sorry for the exam and will have to study more.
• We can't walk because it's raining a lot.

It is also used to separate the elements of an enumeration when it comes to expressions that include commas:

• It was necessary to be in contact with nature; to let the sky, the sea and the wind enter; to sleep on planks, on the ground; to sit in half broken chairs.

In addition, it is used before conjunctions or locutions such as but, more, although, however, therefore and consequently when the statements have a certain length:

—We believe in creativity and the breaking of the oppressive ancient canons as a way of life; however, we are aware that it is necessary to maintain a minimum of tradition in our work.

Colon

This punctuation mark (:) represents a pause longer than the comma and shorter than the period. It stops the speech to draw attention to what follows, which is always closely related to the preceding text. An important and frequent use of this sign is to introduce direct quotations (a use that is sometimes incorrectly attributed to the comma).

Ex: "There is a hurricane warning: all flights have been suspended"

Quotes: single and double quotes

Quotes (' ', “ ”, « ») are punctuation marks that are placed at the beginning and at the end of sentences or words written as quotes or examples, or those that are to be highlighted, either because of the importance given by the author or because of their character ironic, vulgar or foreign and improper of the language that is being used. Although the use of English quotation marks (“ ”) is widespread, it is preferable to use the angular or Spanish ones (« ») before and reserve those, and finally the simple ones (' '), for when parts of a text must already be quoted. quoted. For example, they are used:

1. To quote something textually: e.g., “He told me that “he supposedly would come today”.
2. To point out words used in a different sense than normal, in order to indicate that they have been selected on purpose and not by mistake.
3. To indicate the ironic or sarcastic intention of using a word.
4. To indicate something about a word or expression.
5. To present the meaning of a word or expression.
6. To emphasize that a word or expression is foreign, it is a nickname or a pseudonym.

In Spanish three types of quotation marks are used:

1. Castilian, Latin, Spanish, double angular or guillemet (“ »).
2. Double or English quotations (“ ”).
3. Simple quotes (‘ ’).

A distinction is made between opening quotes («, “, ') and closing quotes (», ”, ’).

Each of these signs has its own use. As a general rule, angle quotes are used as the first option. If a second quotation appears within what is already in quotation marks, other quotation marks would be used, the English ones being preferable, to leave the simple ones as the final resource. The most common is to put quotation marks, from the outside in, in the following order: "..."...'...'..."...»

Single quotes are used to mark examples where italics are not appropriate. Its use is also preferred to present the meaning of a word:

«—The author said: “Quotes ('punctuation marks used to demarcate different levels in a sentence') are used extensively in my work.”»

The rule says that the punctuation marks of a sentence that contains a text between quotation marks must be placed after the closing quotation marks, except when that text does not belong to any other sentence, that is, when the phrase or sentence between quotation marks is individual.

In Spanish, no space is left between the quotation marks and their content. Each language has its own rules for applying quotation marks.

Parentheses, brackets and braces

Parentheses (singular brackets) are punctuation marks. They are used in pairs to separate or insert one text within another or to make a clarification. The different types are:

• the parentheses themselves said: ()
• the brackets: []
• keys: {}

To distinguish both parentheses we use to say:

• Parathesis that opens or left parenthesis to the symbol (.
• Parathesis that closes or parentheses right to the symbol).

Just like quotes, when they have to be used several times in the same fragment, they are used as follows: (…[…{…}…]…)

Question Marks

The question mark ( ?) is used to ask a question. Its origin is Latin. The word "question" comes from the Latin questio, or 'question', abbreviated as "Qo". This abbreviation became the question mark.

In most languages, a single question mark is used at the end of the interrogative sentence: How old are you? (English; in Spanish "¿Cuántos años tienes?"). This was also the habitual use in Spanish, until long after the second edition of the Ortografía de la Real Academia, in 1754, declared it mandatory to start questions with the inverted question mark (¿), and ending them with the existing question mark (?) (“How old are you?”) while ordering the same for the exclamation points (¡) and (!). Adoption was slow, and books, even from the 19th century, do not use such opening signs. Finally it was generalized, surely because the syntax of Spanish does not help in many cases to deduce when the interrogative sentence begins, unlike in other languages.

A variant that did not become general was to use the opening only when the statement was long, or at risk of ambiguity, but not for short and clearly interrogative phrases, such as «Who lives?». The influence of English is bringing back this old criterion. It is even common that in chat rooms or online conversations in Spanish, only the sign (?) is used to ask, since it saves time when pressing the keys. This might not be of great importance since it is being used in informal conversations.

Exclamation Points

The signs ¡ ! are used to mark the exclamation character or represent a way of acting in a sentence. They are written to begin and end an exclamatory, exhortative, or imperative sentence. Interjections also go between exclamation marks:

• Help!
• - Watch the dog!
• - But what a good idea!
• - Great!
• - Excellent!

Ellipsis

An ellipsis (…) is three periods with no spaces between them, they are a single punctuation mark that is used at the end of a word, phrase, or sentence in place of the period or other mark. They are used to leave an action in doubt, continuation or on hold and are aligned horizontally at the level of the writing baseline. They also indicate that one or more words have been deleted for grammatical or stylistic reasons (asyndeton, ellipsis).

Stripe

The underscore (—), which should not be confused with the underscore (_) —especially in computer contexts— or with the hyphen (-) —which is shorter— since they have With very different uses and meanings, it is used to introduce a subsection within a more extensive statement and to indicate in the dialogues the intervention of each speaker and the narrator's comments and subsections. Two are written, one to open and one to close, except when the dialogue does not continue, when it is advisable to delete the last one and replace it with the obligatory point; In addition, they are written separated from the rest of the sentence with a space, and attached to the paragraph itself. In the case of the subparagraphs, it can replace the comma for greater isolation of the same and also the parentheses, but to express a smaller one.

Uses of the stripe:

1. To enclose the intercalated elements, instead of commas:
   • The garments of the young spirit — enthusiasm and hope — correspond, in the harmony of history and nature, to movement and light.
   • To achieve a good image — that impact — take care of your manners.
   • I will not go but tomorrow," the child said.
2. In direct-style dialogues, to separate the discourse from each character:

—Luis, the first impression in an interview is definitive.

- I know and I'm getting ready.

I wish you a lot of success.

To write the dash with the Spanish computer keyboard, in Microsoft Windows hold down the «Alt» key while pressing «0151» on the numeric keypad. On Apple operating systems you can achieve the same effect with "Alt" and the hyphen (-) key on Mac computers.