Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/370

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NOTES AND QUERIES. cio* s. n. GOT. is, 190*;

manuscript practice leads from 6 to *, but it must be clearly demonstrated. Otherwise one must point to the existence of l as the very commonest of punctuation marks, used for all purposes, from the ninth century to the thirteenth and later ; to slight variations of it ( 2 is the commonest) to the last of the book manuscripts ; to / as the mark of punctua- tion for all purposes which was adopted by the German printers ; and to the descent of the MS. interrogation mark 3 from just that simple addition of a tick or " accent" to the point. Then one must ask whether it is possible to maintain that so artificial a form as 6 or 'o' (where no o was present in the text) could have held on its way.

Surely not. The sign ! is a modern* printers' specialization of the common sign 4.

3. The mark of interrogation. The forms taken by 1 in MSS. are shown in 5 (in nearly chronological order). But then this sign is not confined to interrogative sentences ; e.g. 6 is used as a very strong punctuation. The occurrence of the common sign 2 (=comma or semicolon) after an interrogative phrase is very frequent. Thus it is very difficult to maintain that any of those signs indicated a consciousness of interrogation. It is at best a specializing of the common 2 (universal for comma, &c.) ; and the ? form which we now use is first found regularly used in early printing.

4. Our comma (and the same mark in ; in 1 1 ^ j fc j^g no i n di v id ua ] history. From

the beginning of Greek writing a mark ) has been used to divide letters and words, when the writer specially desired to do so. Thus it came commonly to be used in ostraka, papyri, and manuscripts, to mark abbreviation, and for every similar purpose. It is generally curved, like most of the strokes of hand- writing, but no doubt the simple intent was to draw a line of separation. This is the modern apostrophe, one of the oldest of signs. But who can say whether it was not reinvented in early printing ?

In the MSS. of all the centuries this stroke is used, often more ornamental, e g. 7 ; but never by any fixed rule. It was not the ordinary comma-sign of the Middle Ages, for that was 4 or /. This last form is used as a comma in early German print, and may be the immediate parent of the modern curling comma.

Our quotation marks are not inverted com- mas in origin. The older shapes are larger.

but it occurs in modern sixteenth-century printers 1567 is the earliest I have found.
 * The actual first appearance of ! is not yet traced

Compare the French forms 8 and the Ger- man 9. The use of the comma is a printers 7 usage (for their own convenience). Cp. ' (the so-called inverted semicolon*) used to repre- sent the mediaeval 10. The semicolon is very old ninth century at least ; it is not a semi- colon; it is not a full-stop over a comma ; it is the same as the Greek 2 (^question), and the two are used interchangeably in some MSS. It is derived from nothing but itself.

5. &. & is directly traceable to et. This is one of the few signs whose origin was understood in the MSS. It is constantly reclothed in shapes of e and t. But n is the Roman-letter form which survived from the earliest ligatured ornamental hands, while 12 and l3 were kept for italic printing. Hence respectively, perhaps, our & in print, and our 14 in manuscript.

6. Diseresis mark. One of the oldest marks. But its indication of diaeresis is modern. In some very early MSS. (e.g., fifth century) there seems to be an inclination to prefer % and v when they are initial after an unelided vowel. But " seems to be an incli- nation " is the most that can be said. Con- sistency in the use of such marks is an entirely modern development.

7. The modified ii in German. This is a case of suprascription, I think. An extremely ancient form of E is 15. It has persisted in German hands, 16. When suprascript ifc gradually yielded to haste and became lr. That is what I expect to find in a closer study of the documents ; but I do not speak " by the book "here.

8. The French 18. The sixteenth-century form of 5 is 19. From this the French has become *> (= 18 ), and the English 5.

9. f=s. The two shapes existed side by side in the early centuries. The tall form is- the parent of our s of ordinary script, while the s is unchanged.

The written s in early Merchant Taylors* School admission-rolls is 21, which is still used in German handwriting l22 and English 23.

10. The full-stop and colon. The full-stop begins to appear on the line about the sixth century. But at first it was the lightest punctuation mark, and remained for cen- turies unimportant and neglected. The colon was, on the other hand, quite common. The high and middle points struggled with them both until printing made " the last first," and relegated the most common colon to use on rare occasions, giving the then vanquished

the MSS. It would be a difficult sign to make, as- against 2 -
 * There is nothing like an inverted semicolon in