Up until the middle of the nineteenth century the punctuation appearing in printed texts was usually determined by the printer rather than the author. In the United States a 'full stop' is called a 'period'. The standardisation of marks was determined by the resources available to the printer and the emergence of specialist type founders led to the widespread use of particular type faces in different parts of Europe. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Wordsworth, and Charlotte Bronte all asked their respective publishers to correct the punctuation in their manuscripts. 4 A collection of quotable quotes about punctuation.
Many writers profess great exactness in punctuation, who never yet made a point.
If you take hyphens seriously you will surely go mad. The use of commas cannot be learned by rule. Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own jokes. Anyone who can improve a sentence of mine by the omission or placing of a comma is looked upon as my dearest friend.