COMMAS

The shapes of punctuation marks became standardized, with the invention, of the printing press.

Maybe in another two hundred years, a different set of new barely recognizable marks, will be standard.

The English language has a series of specific complex rules about the proper use of punctuation marks.

Today’s rules, however, have not existed since the birth of writing.

They used punctuation marks so that actors, reciting their lines would know where to pause.

While there is some variation between British and American usage, English punctuation marks have been standardized.

Because books were copied and produced by hand, the shapes, and meanings of these symbols still varied.

Ancient, Greek playwrights, began using simple 3 punctuation marks in their texts

The shapes and meanings of these symbols still varied, often drastically, from book to book

Commas for example, were far more widespread in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than they are today.

Even after the shapes became uniform, it still took several, hundred years for their uses to become fixed.

The Italian publisher, and printer Aldus Manutius was the source of several important innovations.

Books became more widespread, and, punctuation began to apply to grammatical structures.

Manutius was also one of the first printers to use semicolons round parentheses and, italic type.

Manutius took a mark called the virgula suspensiva a mark that resembled a forward slash, and turned it into a comma.