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ADVENT 257
The Evolution of Writing, Reading and Printing of the Alphabet History of the Latin Alphabet Latin or Roman script is a series of graphic representative signs (script) based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, and derived from a form of the Cumaean Greek version of the Greek alphabet, used by the Etruscans. The Latin script is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world. It is the standard script of the English language and is frequently referred to simply as ‘the alphabet’ in both spoken and written English. It is a true alphabet (As in, it contains separate letters [not diacritic marks] for both consonants and vowels) which originated in the 7th century BC in Italy and has changed continually over the last 2500 years. It also has roots in the Semitic alphabet and its offshoot alphabets, the Phoenician, Greek, and Etruscan. NOTE: The Semitic alphabet in its earliest form, the Proto-Sinaitic script of Egypt has yet to be fully deciphered. The earliest known alphabetic (or ‘proto-alphabetic’) inscriptions are written in the so-called Proto-Sinaitic (or Proto-Canaanite) script sporadically attested as being in use across the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt and in Canaan (the latter corresponds roughly to present-day Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Israel, a land also known as Phoenicia) during the Middle and Late Bronze Age. However, the script did not become widely used until the rise of what were dubbed new Semitic kingdoms in the 13th and 12th centuries BC. The Phoenician alphabet is a direct continuation of the ‘Proto-Canaanite’ script of the Bronze Age collapse period which overall spanned 3000 BC to 1200 BC, but varied in length between Europe, the Near East and South Asia. The Ahiram epitaph, engraved on the sarcophagus of king Ahiram from about 1200 BC, one of five known Byblian royal inscriptions, shows what is essentially the fully developed Phoenician script. Over time, the phonetic sound values of some letters changed, some letters were lost and others gained, and several writing styles (‘hands’) developed. Two styles, the minuscule and majuscule hands, were ultimately combined into one script with alternate forms for the lower and upper case letters. Due to classicism, modern uppercase letters differ only slightly from their classical counterparts. There are few regional variants. The Latin alphabet started out as uppercase serifed (with a slight projection finishing off a stroke of a letter) letters known as roman square capitals. Also known as capitalis monumentalis, inscriptional capitals, elegant capitals and capitalis quadrata, this ancient Roman form of writing, became and still is the basis for modern capital letters. Meanwhile, the lowercase letters evolved through cursive styles (where some characters are written joined together in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster i.e. what the English refer to as longhand). These styles were fundamentally developed in order to adapt the formerly inscribed alphabet to be written with a pen. Down through the ages, many dissimilar stylistic variants of each letter have appeared but remain identified as the same original letter. Following the evolution of the *dab* alphabet from the Western Greek Alphabet through Old Italic alphabet, G developed from C, the letter J developed from a flourished I, V and U split and the ligature of VV became W, the letter thorn was introduced from the runic alphabet but was lost in all languages except Icelandic, and the letter s could be written either as a long s (ſ) inside a word or as a terminal s at the end or after a long s (ß) after the 7th century AD, but the long s was generally abandoned in the 19th century. However, courtesy of classical revival, Roman capitals were reintroduced by humanists making Latin inscriptions easily legible to modern readers while many medieval manuscripts are unreadable to an untrained modern reader, due to unfamiliar letterforms, narrow spacing and abbreviation marks with some exceptions of some marks such as the apostrophe and the exception of Carolingian minuscule letters (lower caps) which were mistaken for Roman. Additionally the phonetic value of the letters has changed from the original and is certainly not constant across the languages adopting the Latin alphabet, for instance comparing English with French. Quite often the orthography fails to fully match the phonetics, resulting in Homophonic heterographs (words written differently but sounding the same) for example in English rough and ruff and also adopting digraphs covering new sounds, such as ‘sh’ for Voiceless post-alveolar fricative in English. Development of Letter case within the Latin Alphabet Letter case (often simply referred to as case) is the distinction between the letters of the alphabet that are written in their larger form known as upper case (however other terms frequently used are uppercase, capital letters, capitals, caps, large letters, or more formally majuscule). In logical contrast the smaller version of letters are known as lower case (other terms regularly in use include lowercase, small letters, along with the more formal minuscule). Both only apply in the written representation of certain languages. The writing systems that physically distinguish between the upper and lower case employ two parallel sets of letters, where each letter in one set normally has an equivalent in the other set. Fundamentally, the two case variants are alternative presentations of the same letter; they are both assigned the same name as well as pronunciation and have identical values when information is to be sorted in alphabetical order. The terms upper case and lower case maybe be written as two consecutive words, connected with a hyphen (upper-case and lower-case), or the two components merged as a single word (uppercase and lowercase). In fact, these terms originated from what were the common layouts of the shallow drawers called type cases used to hold the movable type for letterpress printing. Traditionally, the capital letters were stored in a separate shallow tray or ‘case’ that was located above the case which held the small letters, and since capital letters are taller the name proved easy to remember. Majuscule, is technically any script in which the letters are depicted with very few or short ascenders and descenders, or none at all (for example, the majuscule scripts used in the Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209, or the Book of Kells). By virtue of their visual impact, this then made the term majuscule an apt descriptor for what much later came to be more commonly referred to as uppercase or capital letters. The Codex Vaticanus, author Eusebius was completed between 300 and 325 is considered to be one of the oldest extant manuscripts of the Greek Bible (Old and New Testament), and one of the four great uncial codices. The Codex is named after its place of conservation in the Vatican Library, where it has been kept since at least the 15th century. The Book of Kells (Latin: Codex Cenannensis; Irish: Leabhar Cheanannais is held in Dublin, Trinity College Library in Ireland. Sometimes known as the Book of Columba, it is an illuminated manuscript Gospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament together with various prefatory texts and tables. Minuscule refers to lower-case letters. The word is often spelled miniscule, because of its association with the unrelated word miniature and the prefix mini-. Traditionally this has been regarded as a spelling mistake (since minuscule is derived from the word minus), however it is now so common that some dictionaries tend to accept it as a nonstandard or variant spelling. Nevertheless, Miniscule is still less likely to be used in reference to lower-case letters. Originally alphabets were written entirely in majuscule or capital letters, spaced between well-defined upper and lower bounds. When written quickly with a pen, these tended to result in rounder and much simpler forms. It is from these that the first minuscule writing hands developed, the half-uncials and cursive minuscule, which no longer stayed bound between a pair of lines. These in turn formed the foundations for the Carolingian minuscule script, developed by famous scholar Alcuin of York for use in the court of Charlemagne (742 to 814 AD), which quickly spread across Europe. The advantage of the minuscule over majuscule was supposedly improved, faster readability. In Latin, papyri from Herculaneum dating before 79 AD (when the ancient Roman town was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius) have been found written in old Roman cursive, where the early forms of minuscule letters d’, ‘h’ and ‘r’ for example, can already be recognised. According to papyrologist Knut Kleve, ‘The theory, then, that the lower-case letters have been developed from the fifth century uncials and the ninth century Carolingian minuscules seems to be wrong’. Both majuscule and minuscule letters existed, but the difference between the two variants was initially stylistic rather than orthographic and the writing system was still basically unicameral (of a single legislative body): a given handwritten document could make use of either one style or the other but these were not mixed. European languages did not make the distinction between cases, other than Ancient Greek and Latin until around 1300. The timeline for writing in Western Europe is divisible into four eras: Greek majuscule (9th to 3rd century BC) in contrast to the Greek uncial script (3rd century BC to 12th century AD) and the later Greek minuscule Roman majuscule (7th century BC to 4th century AD) in contrast to the Roman uncial (4th to 8th century AD), Roman Half Uncial, and minuscule Carolingian majuscule (4th to 8th century AD) in contrast to the Carolingian minuscule (around 780 to 12th century). [Carolingian Empire Franks & Lombards]. Gothic majuscule (13th and 14th century), in contrast to the early Gothic (end of 11th to 13th century), Gothic (14th century), and late Gothic (16th century) minuscules. NOTE: Uncial is defined as ‘of or written in a majuscule script with rounded unjoined letters which is found in European manuscripts between the 4th and 8th centuries; from which modern capital letters are derived’. Traditionally, certain letters were rendered differently according to a set of rules. Specifically, those letters that began sentences or nouns were enlarged and often written in a distinct script. There was actually no fixed capitalisation system until the early 18th century. The English language eventually dropped the rule for nouns, while the German language retained it. Similar evolution has taken place in other alphabets. The lower-case script for the Greek alphabet has its origins in the 7th century and only acquired its quadrilinear form in the 8th century. Over time, uncial letter forms were increasingly mixed into the script. The earliest dated Greek lower-case text is found in the Uspenski Gospels (MS 461 a New Testament minuscule manuscript written in Greek) in the year 835. The modern practice of capitalising the first letter of every sentence appears to have been imported (even today the system is rarely used when printing Ancient Greek materials). The Evolution of Word Spacing and Punctuation Modern English, both hand written and printed, uses a space to separate individual words, however not all languages adhere to this practice. In chronological terms spaces were not used to separate words in Latin until roughly 600 to 800 AD, whereas Ancient Hebrew and Arabic did use physical spaces, but partly to compensate for clarity issues arising from the lack of vowels. Traditionally, all CJK languages have had no spaces, and certainly in the main both modern Chinese and Japanese do not; yet conversely modern Korean does use spaces. Meanwhile, Runic texts make use of either interpunct-like (consisting of a vertically centred dot) or colon-style punctuation marks as word separation devices. Taking spacing a stage further, essentially it is only those languages based upon a Latin-derived alphabet (English being one) which have adopted a varied methodology of sentence spacing since the advent of movable printing type in the 15th century. Spacing toward Punctuation What are known as the Semitic languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and Syriac), especially when written without vowels, were pretty much always recorded with word separation, even in their most ancient form, and indeed continued to be transcribed with this formatting into modern times The earliest alphabetic based writing had no capitalisation, spaces or vowels and few punctuation marks. However, this system only worked effectively if the subject matter was confined to a limited spread of everyday topics (e.g. written records pertaining to business transactions). Although in real historical terms, punctuation was designed as an aid to reading aloud. The oldest known document using punctuation is the Mesha Stele (a 9th century BC inscribed stone, set up around 840 BC by King Mesha of Moab Mesha). Mesha Stele is inscribed with the cautionary tale of how Chemosh, the god of Moab, had been angry with his people and as a result allowed them to be subjugated by Israel, but eventually Chemosh returns and helps the people to restore Moab’s independence and throw off the yoke of Israeli oppression. It is written in the Phoenician alphabet and employs points between the words along with horizontal strokes between the sense sections, as punctuation. The Arrival of Symbolic Punctuation Most texts of the time were still written in scriptura continua, meaning without any separation between words. However, the Greeks began to sporadically use punctuation marks, consisting of vertically arranged dots [usually two (dicolon) or three (tricolon)], in and around the 5th century b.c. as an aid to the oral delivery of texts. Greek playwrights such as Euripides and Aristophanes definitely used symbols to distinguish the ends of phrases in written drama: essentially helping the thespians to know when to pause. Post 200 b.c., the Greeks used the Aristophanes of Byzantium system (named théseis) of a single dot (punctus) placed at varying heights to mark up speeches at rhetorical dividing lines: · hypostigmḗ – a low punctus on the baseline to mark off a komma (unit smaller than a clause [a unit of grammatical organisation next below the sentence in rank and in traditional grammar said to consist of a subject and predicate.]); · stigmḕ mésē – a punctus at midheight to mark off a clause (kōlon); and · stigmḕ teleía – a high punctus to mark off a sentence (periodos). In addition, the Greeks used the paragraphos (or gamma) to mark the beginning of sentences, marginal diples (marks once used in margins to draw attention to something in the text.) to mark quotations, and a koronis (both a textual symbol and a mark over vowel letters in Ancient Greek) to indicate the end of major sections. Circa 1st century b.c., the Romans also occasionally used symbols to indicate pauses, but the Greek théseis, subsequently known by the name distinctiones, prevailed to become a more or less widespread standard from the 1st to the 4th century A.D. Certainly, according to scholarly observer practitioners ranging from Aelius Donatus (Roman grammarian and teacher of rhetoric 1st Century AD) through to Isidore of Seville (Scholar and Archbishop of Seville 7th century AD). Also, during the 1st century BC, texts were sometimes laid out per capitula, where every sentence had its own separate line. Originally diples were used for these demarcations; however by the late period (664 BC until 332 BC) they had often regressed into comma-shaped marks. The Development of Punctuation Punctuation evolved dramatically as copies of the Bible began to be produced in large numbers. Given that it was essential that the holy tome be read aloud, so the copyists began to introduce a range of spoken word marks to help the reader. These included indentation, various punctuation marks (diple, paragraphos, simplex ductus), and an early version of initial capitals (litterae notabiliores). Jerome (tutored by the aforementioned Aelius Donatus) who along with colleagues, made a translation of the Bible into Latin, the Vulgate around 400 AD, employed a formatting system based on the established methodology used for teaching the speeches of Demosthenes and Cicero. Under this layout per cola et commata every sense-unit was indented and given its own line. However, this layout was solely used for biblical manuscripts in a period covering the 5th to 9th centuries and was then abandoned in favour of punctuation. Meanwhile in the 7th and 8th centuries Irish and Anglo-Saxon scribes, whose native languages were not derived from Latin, added further visual cues to render texts more intelligible. Irish scribes introduced the practice of word separation. Likewise, insular scribes (post-Roman Hiberno/Saxon) adopted the distinctiones system while adapting it for minuscule script (to make the signage more prominent) not by employing differing height but rather a variable number of marks mainly aligned horizontally (or sometimes triangularly) to indicate a pause's value: one mark for a minor pause, two for the medium version, and three for a major. Most common were the punctus, a comma-shaped mark, and a 7-shaped mark (comma positura), often used in combination. The same symbols could be used in the margin to mark off quotations. Nevertheless, despite these advances, an alternative system emerged in France during the late 8th century under the Carolingian dynasty. In its original form, this system was used to indicate how the voice should be modulated when chanting the liturgy, but gradually the positurae as it was known, steadily migrated into any text meant to be read aloud, and ultimately to all manuscripts. Positurae first worked itself into England over the latter part of the 10th century AD, most likely during the Benedictine reform movement, but was not adopted as standard practice until after the Norman Conquest. The original positurae were the punctus, punctus elevatus (an inverted latter day semi-colon), punctus versus, and punctus interrogatives (dot with a flourish above as in the modern day question mark), but a fifth symbol, the punctus flexus (very similar to the punctus interrogatives), was added in the 10th century to indicate a pause of a value between the punctus and punctus elevatus. In the late 11th/early 12th century the punctus versus (similar in appearance to a semicolon) faded away and was taken over by the simple punctus (now with two distinct values). The arrival of the late Middle Ages saw the addition of the virgula suspensiva (slash or slash with a midpoint dot) which was often used in conjunction with the punctus for different types of pauses. Direct quotations continued to be marked with marginal diples, as they were in antiquity, but from at least the 12th century scribes also began entering diples (sometimes doubled up) within the physical column of text. Later Developments Leading to Modern Punctutation The volume of printed material becoming available and thus its readership began to increase after the invention of moveable type in Europe in the 1450s. To quote writer and editor, Lynne Truss, ‘The rise of printing in the 14th and 15th centuries meant that a standard system of punctuation was urgently required.’ The introduction of a standard system of punctuation has also been attributed to the Venetian printers Aldus Manutius (Venetian humanist, scholar, educator, who became a printer and publisher when he helped found the Aldine Press in Venice, 1495) and his grandson. They have been credited with popularising the practice of ending sentences with the colon or full stop, inventing the semicolon (although the punctus versus was still visible in the early 12th century), making occasional use of parentheses and creating the modern comma by lowering the virgule. By 1566, Aldus Manutius the Younger was able to declare that the main objective of punctuation was the clarification of syntax. In a 19th-century manual of typography, published by American Printer Thomas MacKellar in 1866, he writes: ‘Shortly after the invention of printing, the necessity of stops or pauses in sentences for the guidance of the reader produced the colon and full point. In process of time, the comma was added, which was then merely a perpendicular line, proportioned to the body of the letter. These three points were the only ones used until the close of the fifteenth century, when Aldo Manuccio gave a better shape to the comma, and added the semicolon; the comma denoting the shortest pause, the semicolon next, then the colon, and the full point terminating the sentence. The marks of interrogation and admiration were introduced many years after.’ By the 19th century, punctuation in the western world had evolved ‘to classify the marks hierarchically, in terms of weight’. Conveying the use of Punctuation by Example Cecil B. Hartley's teaching poem taken from his title The Gentlemen's Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness, published in 1860 identifies the relative values of punctuation marks: The stop point out, with truth, the time of pause A sentence doth require at ev'ry clause. At ev'ry comma, stop while one you count; At semicolon, two is the amount; A colon doth require the time of three; The period four, as learned men agree. The use of punctuation was not standardised until after the invention of printing.According to the 1885 edition of The American Printer, the importance of punctuation was noted in various sayings by children such as: Charles the First walked and talked Half an hour after his head was cut off. With a semi-colon and a comma added it reads: Charles the First walked and talked; Half an hour after, his head was cut off. Andrew M McTiernan 8/November/2017
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