

Signs of Civilisation
How punctuation changed history
Author: Bård Borch Michalsen
Narrator: David Timson
Unabridged: 4 hr 3 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Sceptre
Published: 11/04/2019
Categories: Nonfiction, Language Arts, History, History Of Civilization
Includes:
Bonus Material
Synopsis
With the invention of printing, reading books moved from being an act only performed by priests and aristocrats into an individual, even private, activity. This change helped spark the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution - in which punctuation played a crucial role. As long as texts were read out loud only by an educated elite there was no need for punctuation to mark pauses, full stops or questions.
So punctuation - the full stop, the comma, the exclamation mark, the question mark and the semicolon - helped shape modern-day Europe as we know it.
(P)2019 Hodder & Stoughton Limited