Editing Punctuation (section)

===Western antiquity===
During antiquity, most scribes in the West wrote in {{lang|la|[[scriptio continua]]}}, i.e. without punctuation delimiting [[Word#Word boundaries|word boundaries]]. Around the 5th century&nbsp;BC, the Greeks began using punctuation consisting of vertically arranged dots—usually a dicolon or tricolon—as an aid in the oral delivery of texts. After 200&nbsp;BC, Greek scribes adopted the {{tlit|grc|théseis}} system invented by [[Aristophanes of Byzantium]], where a single dot called a {{tlit|grc|punctus}} was placed at one of several heights to denote rhetorical divisions in speech:
* {{tlit|grc|hypostigmḗ}}{{snd}}a low {{tlit|grc|punctus}} on the baseline to mark off a {{tlit|grc|komma}} (a unit smaller than a [[clause]])
* {{tlit|grc|stigmḕ mésē}}{{snd}}a {{tlit|grc|punctus}} at midheight to mark off a clause ({{tlit|grc|kōlon}})
* {{tlit|grc|stigmḕ teleía}}{{snd}}a high {{tlit|grc|punctus}} to mark off a sentence ({{tlit|grc|periodos}})<ref>E. Otha Wingo, ''Latin Punctuation in the Classical Age'' (The Hague, Netherlands: De Gruyter, 1972), 22.</ref>
In addition, the Greeks used the [[paragraphos]] (or [[gamma]]) to mark the beginning of sentences, marginal [[Diple (textual symbol)|diple]]s to mark quotations, and a [[Coronis (textual symbol)|koronis]] to indicate the end of major sections.

During the 1st century&nbsp;BC, [[Ancient Rome|Romans]] also made occasional use of symbols to indicate pauses, but by the 4th century&nbsp;AD the Greek {{tlit|grc|théseis}}—called {{lang|la|distinctiones}} in Latin{{efn|The Latin names for the marks are {{lang|la|subdistinctio}}, {{lang|la|media distinctio}}, and {{lang|la|distinctio}}.}}—prevailed, as reported by [[Aelius Donatus]] and [[Isidore of Seville]] (7th century). Latin texts were sometimes laid out {{lang|la|per capitula}}, where each sentence was placed on its own line. Diples were used, but by the late period these often degenerated into comma-shaped marks.