Punctuation Remakes the World: Florence Hazrat on the hidden history of the marks that shape how we read, think, and communicate

About this episode

Even that overlooked yet essential little pinprick at the end of this sentence has a history. For once upon a time, there were no stops or periods. And therefore there were no sentences, at least as we conceive them now. “Changes in punctuation,” writes my guest Florence Hazrat, “like changes in language, are normal, but they’re also important reflections of our values.” They are also, perhaps, indications of how we reframe the realities that we create with words. In her new book On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Changed the World , Hazrat ranges from cuneiform and Cicero to uncial and Shakespeare, and beyond, attending to how we have chosen to shape our sentences,…