Communicators are the reigning monarchs of wordsmithing, and their phrases are their instruments and supplies for establishing compelling, persuasive, genuine and authoritative messaging that makes vital connections, displays their group’s mission and values, and brings its voice to life.
Punctuation, then, serves because the nuts, bolts, nails and screws that type the structural assist of organizational goal and expression.
Within the subsequent few editions of Comms Etymology, we wordwrights will discover how the punctuation we use in our on a regular basis writing got here to be, beginning with essentially the most used symbols.
Punctuation Etymology Fundamentals
The phrase “punctuation” is from the Latin pungere, which means “to prick or pierce.” It’s associated to phrases comparable to “pungent” and “poignant” — phrases for issues that pack a metaphorical punch (acceptable provided that “punch” can also be a relative). This phrase initially referred to the follow of psalm-pointing. The dots and marks used to notate psalms in order that they may very well be sung or chanted impressed lots of the symbols we use to punctuate writing immediately.
- Interval (.) comes from the Latin periodus, which means a time frame. But it surely might additionally imply “an entire sentence,” suggesting a phase or time span of speech or writing. Over time, a interval turned the mark that signified when an entire sentence had come to an finish. (The sense of a “time span” can also be why each eras and menstruation are referred to as “intervals.”)
- Comma (,) is initially from the Greek phrase komma, actually which means “minimize off,” although it was additionally used to imply “a clause in a sentence or a line of poetry.” So a comma signifies a pause or actually “a chopping off” of a phrase that’s half of a complete sentence or a line of verse.
- The identify of an exclamation level (!) is self-explanatory — it’s a mark that exclaims. It’s from the Latin exclamare which means “to cry out.” However what you could not know is that for a time within the mid-1800s, exclamation factors have been typically referred to as “shriek-marks.”
- The query mark (?) is an evolution of the 8th-century mark referred to as the punctus interrogativus, which is described as resembling “a lightning flash, placing from proper to left.”
Much less Frequent Punctuation
Ampersand (&)
The image we name an “ampersand” was initially a Roman shorthand model of the Latin phrase et, which means “and,” with the letters E and T stylized right into a ligature, or a typographic mixture of letters. Graffiti together with the image can nonetheless be discovered across the metropolis of Pompeii.
Ligatures have been frequent in Roman cursive, and a few continued into medieval writing types together with the Carolingian minuscule, the usual calligraphic fashion of the period in Europe. One other that has continued, even immediately, is æ.
The phrase ampersand arose within the mid-1800s and is a contraction of the phrase “and per se and,” which implies “(the character) ‘&’ by itself is ‘and’.” An earlier contraction, recorded within the 1700s, was ampassy.
The identify of this mark is quite lengthy as a result of the image was additionally used as part of different shorthand.
For instance, an early image for et cetera, which is Latin for “and the others,” was an ampersand adopted by the letter c. So, the phrase ampersand simply means “the ligature image for and or et by itself” with out anything connected.
Pilcrow
In case you activate annotations in your Phrase or Google doc, you’ll see this image (¶), referred to as a pilcrow, marking paragraph breaks.
This image emerged in Medieval manuscripts: Scribes would mark a break in writing by drawing slightly mark within the margin that appeared like an embellished model of the mark.
It additionally impressed the phrase “paragraph,” actually means “to jot down beside.” The sense shifted to the precise sections, quite than the mark, within the seventeenth century as printing know-how and notations superior.
The phrase “pilcrow,” in flip, is a mangled variation of the phrase “paragraph.” In Outdated French, pelagraphe was a variation of the phrase paragrafe, and this variation was misunderstood in English as pilcraft, which itself was corrupted to “pilcrow,” the phrase for that very same image denoting paragraph breaks in trendy phrase processors (and their predecessors).
Interrobang
And now we come to everybody’s favourite mark, albeit one which’s not often used. The interrobang (‽) was proposed by advert company proprietor Martin Ok. Speckter in 1962 as a device for copywriters to convey a stunned rhetorical query. Interrobang is a portmanteau of “interrogative,” and “Bang,” which has been printer or programmer jargon for an exclamation level since at the least the Nineteen Fifties.
Keep tuned for the following version of Comms Etymology for a further dive into punctuation. Within the meantime, hone your writing abilities by becoming a member of Ragan’s Writing Center.
Jess Zafarris is an creator, content material director, editor, journalist, social media engagement strategist and creator. Her 13 years of expertise on this area have included such roles because the Director of Content material at Ragan Communications, Viewers Engagement Director at Adweek, and Content material Strategist and Digital Content material Director for Author’s Digest and Script Magazine. She moderated and emceed at occasions together with Social Media Week and Brandweek, and offered on the Author’s Digest Convention and State of Social. She can also be the creator of the etymology books “Phrases from Hell” and “As soon as Upon a Phrase” and an academic social media creator who speaks and creates entertaining content material about phrase origins.
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