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Punctuation - Dictionary Definition and Overview |
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Punctuation : (noun)
1: something that makes repeated and regular interruptions or
divisions
2: the marks used to clarify meaning by indicating separation
of words into sentences and clauses and phrases [syn: punctuation
mark]
3: the use of certain marks to clarify meaning of written
material by grouping words grammatically into sentences
and clauses and phrases
Based on WordNet 2.0
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Punctuation : \Punc`tu*a"tion\, n. [Cf. F. ponctuation.] (Gram.)
The act or art of punctuating or pointing a writing or
discourse; the art or mode of dividing literary composition
into sentences, and members of a sentence, by means of
points, so as to elucidate the author's meaning.
Note: Punctuation, as the term is usually understood, is
chiefly performed with four points: the period [.], the
colon [:], the semicolon [;], and the comma [,]. Other
points used in writing and printing, partly rhetorical
and partly grammatical, are the note of interrogation
[?], the note of exclamation [!], the parentheses [()],
the dash [--], and brackets []. It was not until the
16th century that an approach was made to the present
system of punctuation by the Manutii of Venice. With
Caxton, oblique strokes took the place of commas and
periods.
Based on Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
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PUNCTUATION, construction. The act or method of placing points (q.v.) in a
written or printed instrument.
2. By the word point is here understood all the points in grammar, as
the comma, the semicolon, the colon, and the like.
3. All such instruments are to be construed without any regard to the
punctuation; and in a case of doubt, they ought to be construed in such a
manner that they may have some effect, rather than in one in which they
would be nugatory. Vide Toull. liv. 3, t. 2, c. 5, n. 430; 4 T. R. 65;
Barringt. on the Stat. 394, n. Vide article Points.
Based on Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
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