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Punctuation Smooths Path To Clarity, Understanding

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From: Chicago Sun-Times
Date: 19960303
Author:JAMES J. KILPATRICK

More than 2,000 years ago the librarian of Alexandria performed a useful service. The gentleman's name was Aristophanes, but he was not the Aristophanes you are thinking of. That Aristophanes was 150 years earlier. The two weren't even related, so far as I know, but I digress.

Aristophanes the Librarian was a Byzantine scholar. He invented, or at least systematized, the comma, the colon and the period. He developed rules that make sense to this day. His punctuation marks were geared not to the niceties of syntax or grammar, but to the cadences of speech. Where a speaker would naturally ...

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