I just read a fascinating article “A History of Punctuation for the Internet Age” in The New Yorker. As you probably already know, I’m a stickler for punctuation. Without it, I find it frustrating to understand the author’s point of view. According to author David Crystal, Making a Point: The Persnickety Story of English Punctuation, proper use of punctuation shows our identity as educated people. So people who don’t punctuate properly, actually bring attention to their lack of education. Hmmm.
Way back when, words ran together without spaces between them:
youdontevenneedspacesbetweenwordsreally
Then back in Old English manuscripts, people started to capitalize the beginnings of each new word to indicate that there was a new word. So the evolution of punctuation started like this:
YouDontEvenNeedSpacesBetweenWordsReally
With the advent of the printing press, a standardized punctuation system was developed:
To mark the beginnings of new words
In 2007, computer texting incorporated abbreviations and numbers:
Txt msg 2 N8 the Gr8 LOL
In 2014, cell phone technology provided spell check so texting abbreviations died out, but punctuation was still conspicuously missing:
Ya that’s pretty close to me I can do that
When parents started using the same abbreviations and truncated writing styles that their kids used, a funny thing happened: the kids stopped abbreviating! LOL, jk!
The English language will continue to evolve with each new generation, and who knows, maybe someday good ol’ traditional punctuation will become popular again. I suspect that if it does, communication between people will vastly improve.