On the Mark

Florence Hazrat

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Author
Florence Hazrat
Publish Date
2026-08-11
Book Type
Hardcover
Publisher Name
Basic Books
Subject
Writing, Style & Publish
Subtitle
From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Remade the World
Number of Pages
334
ISBN-10
1541606493
ISBN-13
9781541606494
SKU
9781541606494

Description

"Florence Hazrat argues that all punctuation marks, from the most forgotten to the most ubiquitous, are worthy of our attention. After all, the history of punctuation is the history of humankind. The first punctuation mark was a triangular symbol pressed into clay somewhere in Mesopotamia. Spaces between words were unknown for millennia, until a group of Irish monks pioneered them in the eighth century. Across ages and cultures, amid technological revolutions and radical changes in communication, these dots and dashes have reshaped the societies that created them. From the papyruses of the ancient world to our sprawling internet ecosystem, one thing has remained constant: Punctuation is powerful"--