Nonfiction
Book
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PUBLISHED
©2026
EDITION
DESCRIPTION
viii, 334 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
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NOTES
On cover: "A 5,000 year history."
Introduction: Stops and starts - The social history of punctuation -- From Mesopotamian mud to Ancient Alexandria - Punctuation at the dawn of time -- From the Monastery to the Emperor's chambers - Punctuating the Middle Ages -- Renaissance Rhetoric - In pursuit of the nuanced pause -- "Utterly Impertinent" and yet "Rather a Beauty" - Wayward punctuation in Renaissance London -- Knowing a dot from a dash - Editing punctuation -- Minding the mind - Punctuation as a portal of discovery -- Punctuation Politics - Communist commas and other subversive signs -- Typing tone and the punctuation of cyberspace -- Coda: It's not over until it's over
"You know the lively exclamation mark, the controversial semicolon, and the often-omitted apostrophe, but would you recognize a percontation point? How about an obelus? In this irreverent and delightfully intellectual book, Florence Hazrat argues that all punctuation marks, from the most forgotten to the most ubiquitous, are worthy of our attention. After all, the history of punctuation is the history of humankind. The first punctuation mark was a triangular symbol pressed into clay somewhere in Mesopotamia. Spaces between words were unknown for millennia, until a group of Irish monks pioneered them in the eighth century. Across ages and cultures, amid technological revolutions and radical changes in communication, these dots and dashes have reshaped the societies that created them. From the papyruses of the ancient world to our sprawling internet ecosystem, one thing has remained constant: Punctuation is powerful. These tiny marks can move markets, shift elections, topple political systems, and decide the fate of a precious human life on death row. Weaving together anthropology, the history of writing, the philosophy of language, psychology, literature, and more, On the Mark masterfully proves that punctuation is at the heart of human communication."