Hypertext Webster Gateway: "punctuation"

From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) (web1913)

Punctuation \Punc`tu*a"tion\, n. [Cf. F. ponctuation.] (Gram.)
The act or art of punctuating or pointing a writing or
discourse; the art or mode of dividing literary composition
into sentences, and members of a sentence, by means of
points, so as to elucidate the author's meaning.

Note: Punctuation, as the term is usually understood, is
chiefly performed with four points: the period [.], the
colon [:], the semicolon [;], and the comma [,]. Other
points used in writing and printing, partly rhetorical
and partly grammatical, are the note of interrogation
[?], the note of exclamation [!], the parentheses [()],
the dash [--], and brackets []. It was not until the
16th century that an approach was made to the present
system of punctuation by the Manutii of Venice. With
Caxton, oblique strokes took the place of commas and
periods.

From WordNet (r) 1.7 (wn)

punctuation
n 1: the marks used to clarify meaning by indicating separation
of words into sentences and clauses and phrases [syn: {punctuation
mark}]
2: the use of certain marks to clarify meaning of written
material by grouping words grammatically into sentences
and clauses and phrases


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