Punctuation

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Cadmium
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Punctuation

Post by Cadmium »

When looking at all this Latin again, I was wondering about punctuation. Did the Romans use punctuation at all? I remember seeing the use of interpunctio. Was this the early period? On other occasions, sentences were connected through et or followed each other without any punctuation at all. Which one is the most common and does Latin actually need punctuation?

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benissimus
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Post by benissimus »

I was taught that until later times, the Romans wrote without punctuation or even spacing between words. I have seen in some documents they put dots like periods between each word to separate them. Of course all their letters were in capitals and there was no J or U, so there are many things that make it difficult for an untrained person to read an authentic Roman writing.
Last edited by benissimus on Thu Mar 11, 2004 3:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
flebile nescio quid queritur lyra, flebile lingua murmurat exanimis, respondent flebile ripae

Cadmium
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Post by Cadmium »

Aha :).

If all the letters were in capitals, did they have some sort of solution to seperate the letters from the Roman numerals?

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