David Crystal is perhaps the foremost authority on the history of the English language, and his Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language is the best single-volume book on the subject. He has also written Making a Point: The Pernickety Story of English Punctuation. (Why is a whimsical word like ‘pernickety’ used in the title? The book would feel more academic without it.)
The book is described by its publisher as “the first history of English punctuation with a complete guide on how to use it.” Although Pause and Effect by M.B. Parkes is a comprehensive history of punctuation in Western literature, Making a Point is indeed the first history of English punctuation.
Crystal’s main purpose is in providing a detailed guide to punctuation usage, though fortunately he avoids the prescriptivist approach adopted by Lynne Truss in her inexplicably popular Eats, Shoots and Leaves. As Crystal says, “it is not possible to be zero tolerant about a linguistic system that contains so much uncertainty.”
The book is described by its publisher as “the first history of English punctuation with a complete guide on how to use it.” Although Pause and Effect by M.B. Parkes is a comprehensive history of punctuation in Western literature, Making a Point is indeed the first history of English punctuation.
Crystal’s main purpose is in providing a detailed guide to punctuation usage, though fortunately he avoids the prescriptivist approach adopted by Lynne Truss in her inexplicably popular Eats, Shoots and Leaves. As Crystal says, “it is not possible to be zero tolerant about a linguistic system that contains so much uncertainty.”