No, the title isn’t me cursing like a cartoon sailor. It’s just a visual list of some of the punctuation marks that we use every day. But punctuation, like words, have their beginnings. Here’s how we got a few of the pieces of typeset that we use nowadays.
The Origin of Everyday Punctuation Marks
I think my favorite is the Ye Olde English explanation of the equal sign.
“I will settle as I doe often in woorke use, a paire of paralleles, or Gmowe [i.e., twin] lines of one length, thus : == , bicause noe 2 thynges, can be more equalle.”
Doesn’t that look like some teenager’s bad spelling that I copied and pasted off of a gaming forum somewhere?
I see that smile.