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> In classical times, PEOPLEWROTELIKETHISMAKINGITREALLYHARDTOSIGHTREADANUNKNOWNTEXT. They considered writing not as a separate manifestation of language, but ra

> In classical times, PEOPLEWROTELIKETHISMAKINGITREALLYHARDTOSIGHTREADANUNKNOWNTEXT. They considered writing not as a separate manifestation of language, but rather as a record of speech, and it didn’t occur to anybody to distinguish between words or even sentences. Is that really right? I can believe it happened sometimes but it seems implausible that happened all or even most of the time. I can see that the idea of a sentence could be a bit fuzzy but so long as there's a concept of words there could surely be the idea to separate them.

nerdponx 4y ago
As far as I know, all of the written languages around the Mediterranean had very little usage of spaces and punctuation until the Middle Ages. Ancient Greek art even had writing styles where the text would be written in spirals, or alternate between left-to-right and right-to-left. I can't vouch for any argument for or against a reason why that was the case.
- solardev 4y ago
  > I can't vouch for any argument for or against a reason why that was the case. It's not their fault the spacebar hadn't been invented yet.
- whatwherewhy 4y ago
  The alternating left-to-right right-to-left lines were done because you could read it easier that way - they used to have gigantic books/scrolls, the lines were very long.
zote 4y ago
You may enjoy this video[1], despite the premise being about semicolons it goes and touches a bit on the history of punctuation https://youtu.be/vOZgnKqzKEI https://youtu.be/vOZgnKqzKEI [1]
marmetio 4y ago
I wonder if deciding where word boundaries should be was not always obvious. Italian "give it to me" can be three words or one depending on order. me lo da / dammelo. Lots of verb conjugations are basically contractions of the root/infinitive with a version of have/be. scriverai (scrivere hai) you will write (to write you have). Combine that with a fixed written language and constantly evolving spoken language, and it gets muddier. Like my first example, since classical Latin didn't have articles but late Latin did. Would like to hear from native speakers of Romance/neo-Latin languages if that seems plausible or like total bs.

nerdponx 4y ago

As far as I know, all of the written languages around the Mediterranean had very little usage of spaces and punctuation until the Middle Ages. Ancient Greek art even had writing styles where the text would be written in spirals, or alternate between left-to-right and right-to-left. I can't vouch for any argument for or against a reason why that was the case.

solardev 4y ago
> I can't vouch for any argument for or against a reason why that was the case. It's not their fault the spacebar hadn't been invented yet.
whatwherewhy 4y ago
The alternating left-to-right right-to-left lines were done because you could read it easier that way - they used to have gigantic books/scrolls, the lines were very long.

zote 4y ago

You may enjoy this video[1], despite the premise being about semicolons it goes and touches a bit on the history of punctuation https://youtu.be/vOZgnKqzKEI https://youtu.be/vOZgnKqzKEI [1]

marmetio 4y ago

I wonder if deciding where word boundaries should be was not always obvious. Italian "give it to me" can be three words or one depending on order. me lo da / dammelo. Lots of verb conjugations are basically contractions of the root/infinitive with a version of have/be. scriverai (scrivere hai) you will write (to write you have). Combine that with a fixed written language and constantly evolving spoken language, and it gets muddier. Like my first example, since classical Latin didn't have articles but late Latin did. Would like to hear from native speakers of Romance/neo-Latin languages if that seems plausible or like total bs.