Editing Scriptio continua (section)

==History==
Although {{lang|la|scriptio continua}} is evidenced in most Classic Greek and Classic Latin manuscripts, different writing styles are depicted in documents that date back even further. Classical Latin often used the [[interpunct]], especially in monuments and inscriptions.

The earliest texts in Classical Greek that used the Greek alphabet, as opposed to [[Linear B]], were formatted in a constant string of capital letters from right to left. Later, that evolved to [[boustrophedon]], which included lines written in alternating directions.

The Latin language and the related Italic languages first came to be written using [[Old Italic scripts|alphabetic scripts]] adapted from the [[Etruscan alphabet]] (itself ultimately derived from the Greek alphabet). Initially, Latin texts commonly marked word divisions by points, but later on the Romans came to follow the Greek practice of {{lang|la|scriptio continua}}.<ref name="Moore-2001">{{Cite journal |last=Moore |first=F. C. T. |year=2001 |title=Scribes and Texts: A Test Case for Models of Cultural Transmission |journal=The Monist |volume=84 |issue=3 |page=421 |doi=10.5840/monist200184325 |jstor=27903738 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

Before and after the advent of the [[codex]], Latin and Greek script was written on [[scroll]]s by slave scribes. The role of the scribes was to simply record everything they heard to create documentation. Because speech is continuous, there was no need to add spaces.{{citation needed|date=April 2022}} Typically, the reader of the text was a trained performer, who would have already memorised the content and breaks of the script.{{citation needed|date=April 2022}} During the reading performances, the scroll acted as a cue sheet and therefore did not require in-depth reading.{{citation needed|date=April 2022}}

The lack of word parsing forced the reader to distinguish elements of the script without a visual aid, but it also presented the reader with more freedom to interpret the text. The reader had the liberty to insert pauses and dictate tone, which made the act of reading a significantly more subjective activity than it is today. However, the lack of spacing also led to some ambiguity because a minor discrepancy in word parsing could give the text a different meaning. For example, a phrase written in {{lang|la|scriptio continua}} as {{lang|la|collectamexiliopubem}} may be interpreted as {{lang|la|collectam ex Ilio pubem}}, meaning 'a people gathered from Troy', or {{lang|la|collectam exilio pubem}}, 'a people gathered for exile'. Thus, readers had to be much more cognisant of the context to which the text referred.<ref>Parkes, M. B. "Antiquity: Aids for Inexperienced Readers and the Prehistory of Punctuation". Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West. Berkeley: University of California, 1993. p.&nbsp;10–11.</ref>