35
votes
Accepted
Why did Roman authors never feel a need for word spacing?
Why did Roman authors never feel a need for word spacing?
An interesting question because the Romans certainly accepted the notion of word division, at least until about 100 AD, at which point Romans ...
- 8,741
13
votes
What is the name of the separator dots between the words?
It is called the interpunct.
Empty space to separate words as we do now is not a universal phenomenon.
Just as well the Romans might ask why we leave space between words instead of putting a dot in ...
- 116k
12
votes
Accepted
Ancient guides or descriptions of punctuation
The first thing to note when looking at passages and remarks by Romans about “punctuation” is that it is not always clear at first glance whether they are discussing elements of oral delivery or ...
- 8,741
12
votes
Accepted
Did the Romans have a "question mark"?
According to scholars, the earliest written sign ever argued to play the role of an interrogation mark comes from a VI century Syriac manuscript, and passed later into Latin.
My intuition is that, in ...
- 11.6k
9
votes
Accepted
What did Ancient Greek plays look like?
There are two punctuation marks, the paragraphos and the dicolon, which are sometimes used to indicate change of speaker in both papyri and manuscripts. But they aren't always used, and when they are ...
- 31.5k
8
votes
What are New Latin's comma rules?
While I don't know about the history of proponents and critics of this punctuation style who have explicitly discussed it, like you and others here I've also noticed it has been very common to use ...
- 121
8
votes
Is there such a thing as "word-[space-comma-space]-word" punctuation in Latin?
As we all know, the Romans did not have punctuation. Modern (and not so modern) editions of Latin books generally follow the typographic norms of the country where they are printed. For example, Latin ...
- 18k
5
votes
Accepted
Was Greek ever written in this way at any time in antiquity?
All these features you've mentioned not only can be found, but also they're pretty much default.
All ancient Greek inscriptions were written simply in a (rather than the, as there were several ...
cmw♦
- 58.2k
4
votes
Is there such a thing as "word-[space-comma-space]-word" punctuation in Latin?
The typesetter just used extra space before some of the commas to help get the text block properly justified on the right edge. So [space],[space] is completely equivalent to [no space],[space]. You ...
- 20.8k
4
votes
Accepted
Cicero about paragraph marks
While this was answered on Philosophy.SE, that answer doesn't provide an English translation. So let's add one here.
This comes from Cicero's Orator (note: not his more famous De Oratore), section 228:...
- 69.3k
3
votes
Accepted
What are the rules for punctuation marks in Ancient Greek texts?
It would be fair to say the rules of punctuation for such a text depend upon how close the editor prefers it to be to the modern system. As Parkes remarks in the introduction of his Pause and Effect: ...
- 615
3
votes
Which quotation marks should I use when writing Latin?
Hic inveniri possunt explicationes illorum "" vel «» in operibus Latine editis usque ad tempora recentiora: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3288661
3
votes
Pyramus et Thisbe: did their parents forbid what they could not? Ovid, Metamorphoses IV.61
It seems to me that there's a strong reason to take quod non potuere vetare with the following line, namely, that their parents could and did forbid it! The whole point of the story is that their ...
- 31.5k
1
vote
Pyramus et Thisbe: did their parents forbid what they could not? Ovid, Metamorphoses IV.61
The problem, here, may be one of flow. The separation of the "sed" & "quod" clauses works: hard truth: (another) hard truth; it's punchy, driving the story forward; consequently, the "quod" clause ...
- 9,406
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