Did ancient people use punctuation?

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Accepted answer

Yes, though their uses tend to be sporadic and/or inconsistent.

Ancient Chinese texts also used โ–„ as both a full-stop and a comma, or a - for pauses. However, there's a great deal of variation and inconsistency. Often they are omitted and readers are expected to work it out from context, or sentence structures especially if the document is written with a fixed style.

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-- A copy of the Tao Te Ching excavated from the Han Dynasty burial site King Ma's Mound. Some of the punctuation marks, which seem to be analogous to a modern comma, are circled in blue.

Classical Greek also had punctuations that are largely shared with Latin. Here's some with their modern European counterparts:

  • Fullstop: .
  • Comma: ,
  • Colon: ยท
  • Semicolon: ยท

The question mark in Greek developed much later, but was apparently ;

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