Why do we use the period? What's the history behind it?

Question

I know when to use it. I just want to know why we do.

Answer 1

We use the period to end a simple declarative sentence. It makes reading easier. My sister-in-law doesn't use punctuation or capitalization in her e-mails, and I can't tell you how many times I've had to e-mail her and ask, "Is this what you mean?"

The period is derived from the first known punctuation marks devised by Aristophanes of Byzantium.

Aristophanes (Ἀριστοφάνης) of Byzantium (c.257–c.180 BC) was a Greek scholar, critic and grammarian, particularly renowned for his work in Homeric scholarship, but also for work on other classical authors such as Pindar and Hesiod. Born in Byzantium about 257 B.C., he soon moved to Alexandria and studied under Zenodotus and Callimachus. He succeeded Eratosthenes as head librarian of the Library of Alexandria at the age of 60.

Aristophanes is credited with the invention of the accent system used in Greek to designate pronunciation, as the tonal, pitched system of archaic and classical Greek was giving way (or had given way) to the stress-based system of koine. This was also a period when Greek, in the wake of Alexander's conquests, was beginning to act as a lingua franca for the Eastern Mediterranean (replacing various Semitic languages). The accents were designed to assist in the pronunciation of Greek in older literary works.

He also invented one of the first forms of punctuation in the 3rd century BCE; single dots (distinctiones) that separated verses (colometry), and indicated the amount of breath needed to complete each fragment of text when reading aloud (not to comply with rules of grammar, which were not applied to punctuation marks until thousands of years later). For a short passage (a komma), a media distinctio dot was placed mid-level (·). This is the origin of the modern comma punctuation mark, and its name. For a longer passage (a colon), a subdistinctio dot was placed level with the bottom of the text (.), similar to a modern colon or semicolon, and for very long pauses (periodos), a distinctio point near the top of the line of text (·).[1][2][3]

He died in Alexandria around 185-180 B.C.

Edit: There are two theories on the origin of the question mark. One is that it comes form the latin quaestio, meaning "question", which was abbreviated to Qo. The uppercase Q was written above the lowercase o, and this mark was transformed into the modern symbol. Another hypothesis about the origin of the question mark proposes that the mark originated in the 9th century, when it appeared as a point followed by the curvy bit written slanted (similar to the tilde, although the tilde was tilted more upward to the right). The point has always indicated the end of a sentence. The curved line represented the intonation pattern of a spoken question, and may be associated with a kind of early musical notation, like neumes.

Answer 2

We use it to say a thought has come to an end. Have you ever read a run-on sentence that doesn't have any periods? If it's really long...it gets really hard to read because you don't know where one thought ends and another starts. I'd much rather like to know where the question mark came from because a dot that means stop...yeah I can buy that. It's a weird little thing that is different from all the other letters so you stop to look at it for a second. But HOW did they come up with the question mark? I mean it's just weird looking...

Answer 3

We use a period at the end of sentences to tell the reader that the sentence has come to an end.

Answer 4

i have no clue what the history behind punctuation is. i'm sure we started using it so that we could understand the thoughts others wanted to get across in writing.