A brief history of punctuation

How did punctuation first take off? What is the origin of certain symbols? Did it begin with English, Spanish, Hebrew, Russian, Ancient Greek? These questions and more answered in this video.

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[johncounts]

This was really clever. You took one of possibly the hardest subjects to get kids in school interested in - The origin, definition and function of grammar - and made the topic comically unpredictable to get everyone’s attention. Mr. Pinzur couldn’t be prouder lol.

I’m gonna spitball a topic I think would be fun to do and probably not thought of a lot, and suggest the origin and application of numbers, specifically the number zero. Just seems fitting to suggest for some reason.

[mosespinzur]

Sorry Kurt; anything good enough for ol’ honest Abe is good enough for me!

[madballa]

Something I've found interesting is my mom tends to end her texts with "..." No matter what she said and it drove me insane and I guess it goes to show punctuation is more heavily used by older generations

[jessieclement]

I’ve never been so invested in punctuation.

[rsmith]

"Evicted from its insulae." 😂😂😂

I feel like your Latin language humor is lost on most, but it had me cracking up.

[leannmills]

Well let me just take a minute to explain how and when you use semicolons… as someone who went to college, I’m clearly an expert.

All jokes aside, I’m a linguist and a grammarphile, and this was super interesting! Your high-brow humor takes a pretty dry topic and makes it fun and hilarious.

You should make one one bitcoin next.

[randymack]

... Is just a faster way of typing (etc.)

[Dracopol]

2:01 Haha, you said Paul Bunyan. The author was John Bunyan.

[alexandermcreynolds]

Well done, now give an opinion on an Oxford comma.

[jacobsimpson]

Nice work! The "therefore" symbol appears to have been introduced by Johann Rahn in an Algebra textbook in the mid 1600s. He equates it with the Latin "ergo", which itself may be a contraction of "e rogo" (from the direction of). The symbol is almost exclusively used in mathematics and shorthand.

[itsstormcraft]

I actually use commas, points, semicolons, dashes, the stacked dots, question marks and rarely exclamation marks for fictional texts. When writing non fictional, I also use brackets, though I then reduce my use of dashes and semicolons.
I still go to school. So using semicolons does not only show you were to college. Because I use them to make reading my texts better for … probably only me but well, I need to understand them long enough to write them, so … whatever helps.

[gyroelongatedpentagonalbip]

Almost every language has the same punctuation marks. But if I read something in another language and see it has another punctuation system, I just think about how the punctuation marks almost have been internationalised, which is actually crazy. btw singhalese uses this goofy thing ෴

[ezrapinzur]

Iacopo Alpoleio de Urbisaglia is one of my best friends😍

[Tommuli_Haudankaivaja]

I never learnt how to use commas, I just put them where I feel like they fit.

[ZephLodwick]

Emoticons and tone indicators--/j, /s, and so on--are modern online punctuation. They help clear up muddied meanings in writing that'd be obvious in speech or are just fun. Also, the first known smiley may've been in the 1600s "Tumble me down, and I will sit Upon my ruins, (smiling yet:), " but this may've just been a weird use of punctuation. The words of a speech by Abraham Lincoln may've held the 1st winky, but again, this may've been a typo.
Anyway, interrobangs seem like a useful punctuation mark, but it looks so clunky, especially in handwriting, and it's just as easy, and clearer, to write a question and exclamation mark.

[jeanninesmith]

I liked this video a lot. I’m with Abe; I like semi-colons, too! How about making a video about the differences between American English and English English? Many spellings are different, along with the meanings of words. I learned this after spending 11 years living in London. There were some comical and embarrassing moments!

[aziarvids]

Hello!!!
I'm a fan of yours now. Thank you so much. 🥰

[julieclement]

Ok, I’m TOTALLY going to start using the interrobang now! And I confess that YES, I am a fan of the … semi-colon (when used properly, of course!). Great job!

[ddooley]

Bro, this video is a banger. Great work, Lee!