Editing Latin (section)

=== Punctuation ===
Classical Latin did not contain sentence [[punctuation]], letter case,<ref>{{Harvnb|Diringer|1996|p=540}}</ref> or [[interword spacing]], but [[apex (diacritic)|apices]] were sometimes used to distinguish length in vowels and the [[interpunct]] was used at times to separate words.

The first line of [[Catullus 3]] ("Mourn, O [[Venus (mythology)|Venuses]] and [[Cupid]]s") was originally written as:

{| class="wikitable"
! simply
| {{sm|lv́géteóveneréscupidinésqve}}
|-
! with [[long I]]
| {{Smallcaps|lv́géteóveneréscupIdinésqve}}
|-
! with interpunct
| {{sm|lv́géte·ó·venerés·cupidinésqve}}
|}

It would be rendered in a modern edition as:

{| class="wikitable"
! simply
| {{lang|la|Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque}}
|-
! with macrons
| {{lang|la|Lūgēte, ō Venerēs Cupīdinēsque}}
|-
! with apices
| {{lang|la|Lúgéte, ó Venerés Cupídinésque}}
|}

[[File:Hocgracili.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|A modern Latin text written in the Old Roman Cursive inspired by the [[Vindolanda tablets]], the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain. The word {{lang|la|Romani}} 'Romans' is at bottom left.]]

The [[Roman cursive]] script is commonly found on the many [[wax tablet]]s excavated at sites such as forts, an especially extensive set having been discovered at Vindolanda on [[Hadrian's Wall]] in Britain. Most notable is the fact that while most of the [[Vindolanda tablets]] show spaces between words, spaces were avoided in monumental inscriptions from that era.