2980: Punctuation: Not Originally Grammatical Feb 17, 2025

Punctuation used to just be called ‘pointing’, though that is ultimately what ‘punctuation’ still means, from the Latin ‘pungare’ (point; punch). Early punctuation, when there was any to speak of, served largely different roles as it does today. The term ‘punctuation’ did not at first replace ‘pointing’ rather they existed at the same time with the latter basically meaning the symbols people use in their normal writing, and ‘punctuation’ was reserved for nikudot, or the dots and dashes in Hebrew used both to represent otherwise unnoted vowels, but more importantly here they represent stresses, pauses, and types of cantillation. Punctio psalmorum or literally ‘pointing of the psalms’ was the original sense of the term in knowing how to recite them both in Hebrew technically but most often in Latin chants. Indeed the use of the word ‘punctuation’ for purely grammatical purposes only developed in the early modern period [as opposed to the early modern comma] especially bolstered by the printing press.