The period – punctuation mark of sentences In the post on the use of periods in texting, I noted that the period, or the full stop as it is commonly called in British English, has been around since the early 1600s to signal the termination of a sentence (just as a capital letter signals the …
Note: The WritingEssentials blog is on hiatus. Meanwhile, favorite posts will be published with updates. Ellen ~~ Study of the evolution of punctuation marks show how arbitrary they can be, and yet they do add order to written communication, as LeTourneau in English Grammar says, to set off syntactical constituents. In his essay, “In Praise …
The period, or the full stop as it is commonly called in British English, has been around since the early 1600s to signal the termination of a sentence (just as a capital letter signals the start). There are two other forms of end punctuation, the question mark and exclamation point, but as Richard Norquist notes, …