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Title: Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West by M. B. Parkes, M.B. Parkes ISBN: 0-520-07941-8 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1993 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $65.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.25 (4 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: the pedantry is the thing
Comment: ...His assessment of manuscript practices is enhanced by a vast fund of knowledge in classical and medieval history. Parkes has always had an unpretentious way of relating the somewhat esoteric points of palaeography to the wider currents of reading and writing in his chosen time periods. He is able to make you see that grammar and literacy in pre-Reformation Europe were very precious attainments, and that the tradition of classical and later monastic education involved highly sophisticated learning techniques for very good reasons. Highly recommended for the closet pedant with a taste for the lost art of reading!
Rating: 5
Summary: The Standard History of Punctuation
Comment: Parkes' book is *the* standard history of punctuation in Western writing. It is written by a first-rate scholar who has spent a career studying the original manuscripts, and tells an excellent story, if you're interested in such things. As you might expect from such a specialized subject, the presentation is fairly academic, but if you want to understand how modern conventions of punctuation developed, this is the book to read.
Rating: 4
Summary: Where did our punctuation marks come from?
Comment: The ancient Greeks and Romans wrote without punctuation to interrupt their texts. That was left to the reader to interpret the places to pause, stop, or otherwise divide the text.
As Latin grew to be a second language in the Middle Ages, scribes began to give their readers more assistance in interpretation - thus our Western punctuation became varied and prolific.
The invention of the printing press standardized and froze our choice of punctuation.
The author does an amazing job of showing by example how the needs of the both the readers & writers of each period developed into the selection of marks which we use today.
The illustrations of manuscripts being in the back of the book rather than interspersed in the text makes for some shuffling, but the illustrations also carry their own clear descriptions of the particular punctuation practice which they illuminate.
English translations of most of the Latin text used as examples are thoughtfully provided.
I wish we still had use of the rhetorical question mark to indicate a question not requiring an answer!
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Title: Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss ISBN: 1592400876 Publisher: Gotham Books Pub. Date: 12 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $17.50 |
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