Do you know the history of the full stop?
The full stop is stemmed from Greek punctuation. In ancient Greek, people didn't care about writing that much compared with speaking. They preferred to express their thoughts and ideas verbally instead of writing them down.
In the 3rd century BCE, Aristophanes invented a series of dots to represent different meanings of sentences. For example, a high dot located in the upper corner means the full stop. It aimed to end a sentence. The middle dot represents the semicolon nowadays. The function was to let you take a long breath between sentences, while the comma was marked as the lower dot to show a shorter breath.
After a few centuries, the punctuation symbols and their meanings have changed and attested. In the 19th century, both British English and American English adopted and standardized the usage of these punctuations. That's why we have the full stop, comma, and semicolon nowadays.
A study about using full stop constantly in texting
-Ending every sentence with the full stop punctuation in texting will make you sound less sincere!
If we follow grammatical rules, using the full stop at the end of each sentence is totally correct, but why do people feel less sincere with a full stop in texting? For example, my friends asked me to a birthday party next week. I replied, “I am down for it.” What does it sound like? It sounds like I am less excited, right? What if “I am down for it!!”? It probably sounds so much more profound and exciting.
That’s because texting lacks many social cues that we use in face-to-face conversations. When people talk face-to-face, we tend to use facial expressions, tone of voice, and body movements to express our feelings. However, we only can use words to express our thoughts in texting. So, we have to use punctuation and emojis to mimic what we would do in face-to-face conversations. Texting can be boring and dull if we keep using full stops
Do you know any other common punctuation except the full stop? Here are 5 most common punctuation
1. Question mark (?): When people ask a question, they tend to use the question mark at the end of a sentence.
For example: where is the market?
2. Exclamation point (!): People use this punctuation to show their excitement and surprises. Their feelings are stronger when they use exclamation points than the full stop.
For example: I love tonight's party!
3. Comma (,): a comma is used to separate different ideas to clarify sentences' meanings. But the difference between the full stop and the comma is that the comma only represents a short break. It doesn't mean the sentence is completed.
For example: Kids like to play basketball, soccer, and volleyball.
4. colon (:): Colon is used to explain and emphasize your points or list out examples.
For example: We need to learn some subjects today: geography, math, and English.
5. hyphen (-): Hyphens can connect two single words together to make compound words. The new word may have totally different meanings.
For example: Do you want to have a face-to-face meeting?
Do you know the spacing after the full stop?
The first is a one-word space. This is the most common space after the full stop in most countries which uses the Latin alphabet to type.
The second one is a two-word space. There are some arguments about the time of the existence of two-word space. Some people said that it originated from the use of the monospaced font on typewriters, while others claimed that it appeared earlier than that. Two-word space aimed to clear the space between words, although it was gradually replaced by one-word space.
We also have a one-widened space, which has been used in other typing systems. The modern digital computer system can also adjust the space, making it wider after the full stop.