(4) The first formal punctuation system, developed in Egypt, is ascribed to Aristophanes, the head of the library in Alexandria. (3) Occasionally, they separated words on stone inscriptions by using dots.

The ancient Romans also ran words together and almost completely lacked a system of punctuation. This paragraph (literally, 'writing beside') system is the ancestor of the one we use today. However, sometimes the Greeks placed the first letter of a new paragraph in the margin. (2) But long ago, people did not have fixed rules to circumscribe their writing.Īncient Greeks had little punctuation and didn't separate written words. (1) At one time or another, most of us have become frustrated trying to learn the highly prescribed punctuation system that directs our use of marks such as periods, commas, and semicolons. HOWAREYOUIAMFINE This is how 'How are you? I am fine!' might have looked 1,200 years ago. boys will be boys) implicature an additional meaning conveyed by a speaker sticking to the co-opreative principle background knowledge information that is not in a text, but is used from memory by a reader to understand the text schema a conventional knowledge structure in memory for specific things, such as a supermarket (food is displayed on shelves, arranged in aisles, etc.) script dynamic schema, series of conventional actions that take place in schema Hedge a word or phrase used to indicate that you aren't really sure that what you're saying is sufficiently correct or complete manner maxim the assumption in conversation that we will 'be clear, brief and orderly' quality maxim the assumption in conversation that you will 'tell the truth' quantity maxim the assumption in conversation that you won't be 'too general or too detailed' relation maxim the assumption in conversation that you will 'be relevant' tautology an expression (often saying) that seems simply to repeat an element with no apparent meaning (e.g.

The Study of Language by George Yule