英语词汇punctuation的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

punctuation. The word comes from Latin punction, “with the point.” Gertrude Stein was one of many writers who hated punctuation, especially commas, and would have rid the world of them. However, the lack of punctuation can lead to great trouble. In one instance a district attorney introduced an unpunctuated confession taken down by a policeman that read: “Mangan said that he never robbed but twice said it was Crawford.” The prosecution contended this should have been punctuated: “Mangan said he never robbed but twice. Said it was Crawford.” The defense said the sentence should read: “Mangan said he never robbed, but twice said it was Craw- ford.” The last introduced a reasonable doubt, and the accused went free. Every written language has a system of punctua- tion, though they are not identical. In German, for example, nouns are capitalized, and in Spanish an inverted question mark goes at the beginning of a question. According to an old typesetter’s maxim for punctuation: “Set type as long as you can hold your breath without getting blue in the face, then put in a comma; when you yawn, put in a semicolon; and when you want to sneeze, that’s the time for a paragraph.” See comma.

词汇	punctuation
词源	punctuation. The word comes from Latin punction, “with the point.” Gertrude Stein was one of many writers who hated punctuation, especially commas, and would have rid the world of them. However, the lack of punctuation can lead to great trouble. In one instance a district attorney introduced an unpunctuated confession taken down by a policeman that read: “Mangan said that he never robbed but twice said it was Crawford.” The prosecution contended this should have been punctuated: “Mangan said he never robbed but twice. Said it was Crawford.” The defense said the sentence should read: “Mangan said he never robbed, but twice said it was Craw- ford.” The last introduced a reasonable doubt, and the accused went free. Every written language has a system of punctua- tion, though they are not identical. In German, for example, nouns are capitalized, and in Spanish an inverted question mark goes at the beginning of a question. According to an old typesetter’s maxim for punctuation: “Set type as long as you can hold your breath without getting blue in the face, then put in a comma; when you yawn, put in a semicolon; and when you want to sneeze, that’s the time for a paragraph.” See comma.
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