Punctuation - 15th Century

"There was no punctuation until the 15th century."

Punctuation is everything in written language other than the actual letters or numbers, including punctuation marks (listed at right), inter-word spaces and indentation. The earliest writing had no capitalization, no spaces and no punctuation marks. Until the 18th century, punctuation was principally an aid to reading aloud; after that time its development was as a mechanism for ensuring that the text made sense when read silently.

The oldest known document that uses punctuation is the Mesha Stele (9th century BC). This employs points between the words and horizontal strokes between the sense section as punctuation.