Punctuating

'Early manuscripts had no punctuation or, even, spaces between words. The earliest conventions were introduced as a guide when reading aloud became an important activity, such as on literary and liturgical occasions. There was a great deal of experiment: over thirty marks'various combinations of dots, curls, and dashes'can be found in medieval manuscripts, most of which disappeared after the arrival of printing. . . .

The earliest printers generally followed the marks they found in the manuscripts, the actual shapes depending on the typeface used. Most recognized three kinds of pause, represented by a point, a virgule (/), and a mark of interrogation. [William] Caxton chiefly used a virgule and a point (.), occasionally a colon (:) and paragraph mark ('). Word breaks at the end of a line were shown by a double virgule (//). The comma began to replace the virgule in the 1520s, though some printers used them interchangeably for a while. . . .

[T]he apostrophe, at first used only as a mark of omission, [is seen in] 1559. . . . The hyphen, used to identify a compound word, and the exclamation mark . . . arrived towards the end of the century.'

'David Crystal, Punctuating, a sidebar from The Stories of English, 2004. This book is brilliant! Lynne, it's yours next.