Editing Punctuation (section)

===Printing-press era===
{{anchor|Later developments|reason=Old section name; might be linked-to.}}
The amount of printed material and its readership began to increase after the invention of moveable type in Europe in the 1450s. [[Martin Luther]]'s German Bible translation was one of the first mass printed works, he used only [[Slash (punctuation)#Line breaks|virgule]], [[full stop]] and less than one percent [[question mark]]s as punctuation. The focus of punctuation still was rhetorical, to aid reading aloud.<ref>[https://ufg.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/fileadmin/phil-fak/aktuelles/2010/fakultaetspreise/slotta.pdf Historische Kommasetzung bei Luther, en: historical use of comma by Luther], Frank Slotta, for Prof Beatrice Primus, Landesprüfungsamt I NRW, 2010.</ref> As explained by writer and editor [[Lynne Truss]], "The rise of printing in the 14th and 15th centuries meant that a standard system of punctuation was urgently required."<ref>{{cite book |title=Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation |url=https://archive.org/details/eatsshootsleave00trus |url-access=limited |last=Truss |first=Lynne |year=2004 |publisher=Gotham Books |location=New York |isbn=1-59240-087-6 |page=[https://archive.org/details/eatsshootsleave00trus/page/77 77] }}</ref> Printed books, whose letters were uniform, could be read much more rapidly than manuscripts. Rapid reading, or reading aloud, did not allow time to analyze sentence structures. This increased speed led to the greater use and finally standardization of punctuation, which showed the relationships of words with each other: where one sentence ends and another begins, for example.

The introduction of a standard system of punctuation has also been attributed to the Venetian printers [[Aldus Manutius]] and his grandson. They have been credited with popularizing the practice of ending sentences with the [[colon (punctuation)|colon]] or [[full stop]] (period), inventing the [[semicolon]], making occasional use of [[bracket#Parentheses|parentheses]], and creating the modern [[comma (punctuation)|comma]] by lowering the virgule. By 1566, Aldus Manutius the Younger was able to state that the main object of punctuation was the clarification of [[syntax]].<ref>{{cite book |title= Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation|url= https://archive.org/details/eatsshootsleave00trus|url-access= limited|last= Truss|first= Lynn|year= 2004|publisher= Gotham Books|location= New York|isbn= 1-59240-087-6|pages=[https://archive.org/details/eatsshootsleave00trus/page/77 77]–78}}</ref>

By the 19th century, punctuation in the Western world had evolved "to classify the marks hierarchically, in terms of weight".<ref name="eatsshootsleave00trus112"/> Cecil Hartley's poem identifies their relative values:
<poem style="margin:1.2em 0 1.5em 3em;">
The stop point out, with truth, the time of pause
A sentence doth require at ev'ry clause.
At ev'ry comma, stop while ''one'' you count;
At semicolon, ''two'' is the amount;
A colon doth require the time of ''three'';
The period ''four'', as learned men agree.<ref>{{cite book |title=Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation |url=https://archive.org/details/eatsshootsleave00trus |url-access=limited |last=Truss |first=Lynn |year=2004 |publisher=Gotham Books |location=New York |isbn=1-59240-087-6 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/eatsshootsleave00trus/page/112 112]–113 }}</ref>
</poem>
The use of punctuation was not standardised until after the invention of printing. According to the 1885 edition of ''The American Printer'', the importance of punctuation was noted in various sayings by children, such as:
<poem style="margin:1.2em 0 1.5em 3em;">
[[Charles I of England|Charles the First]] walked and talked
Half an hour after [[Execution of Charles I|his head was cut off]].
</poem>
With a semicolon and a comma added, it reads as follows:
<poem style="margin:1.2em 0 1.5em 3em;">
Charles the First walked and talked;
Half an hour after, his head was cut off.<ref>[[Iona and Peter Opie]] (1943) ''I Saw Esau''.</ref>
</poem>
In a 19th-century manual of [[typography]], Thomas MacKellar writes:
{{Blockquote|Shortly after the invention of printing, the necessity of stops or pauses in sentences for the guidance of the reader produced the colon and full point. In process of time, the comma was added, which was then merely a perpendicular line, proportioned to the body of the letter. These three points were the only ones used until the close of the fifteenth century, when Aldo Manuccio gave a better shape to the comma, and added the semicolon; the comma denoting the shortest pause, the semicolon next, then the colon, and the full point terminating the sentence. The marks of interrogation and admiration were introduced many years after.<ref>{{cite book |title= The American Printer: A Manual of Typography, Containing Practical Directions for Managing all Departments of a Printing Office, As Well as Complete Instructions for Apprentices: With Several Useful Tables, Numerous Schemes for Imposing Forms in Every Variety, Hints to Authors, Etc.|edition= Fifteenth – Revised and Enlarged|last= MacKellar|first= Thomas|year= 1885|publisher= MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan|location= Philadelphia|page=63}}
</ref>}}