Of Punctuation Marks

Oh to be a fact checker and privy to arcane minutia or to verify well known facts. How often does the reclusive checker find an error—or a fact half correct and receive any accolades for the find? Or is it all in a day's labor?

I am not a nit picker. I don't look for errors or partial truths, but I occasionally stumble over sloppy reporting of a detail. Yesterday while reading a mystery one character said to the other character—"Manutius's invention—the semi-colon."

Let me set the stage—today was inclement, snowy, raw, and one of many we've had this winter. I was delighted to look into the history of the semi-colon. It seems that in 1494, Aldus Manutius, an Italian printer, "added the semi-colon to a Roman typeface." I noted the word—added, not invented ; he simply added the semicolon to a font.

To give Manutius his due—according to writings in the National Library of Scotland—he was a scholar who printed manuscripts he himself edited, or translated from Latin or Greek. To some lovers of books he "liberated" books from private or cloistered studies into the everyday world.

Early on he printed the entire works of Aristotle—first printed edition.

Slater magazine says that Aldus "revived" the semicolon.

Thus far I haven't found any use of Interrobangs—which is a nonstandard punctuation mark. It's useful for those people who want to end a sentence with both a question and an exclamation mark. It may be printed side by side or as a combined symbol.