St. Paul daily globe., 1895-11-29
:. HOW TO PUNCTUATE.
Proposed Revolution I'm the Sys-
tenn of Writing and Printing.

tenn of Writing and Printing.
Pittsburg Dispatch.
.Dhe iconoclast's task Is far from
desirable Age and cIstcm are large
elements in reverence .Veneration is
close akin to religion with most folk
And yet all progress is system of
reyplu.ion, though not all revolution
is necessarily progressive There
may be nothing new Under the sun,
but there ought to be And one
of the Things should be reformation
of our system of punctuation To
begin, there's a right or wrong
way to do mort things, and
freauensly there's BETTER way This
is quite apparent in our method of
pointings ?Who has not been seri-
ously puzzled in his readings to know
as he proceeded with a sentence,
whether it was destined to terminate
declaratively, interrogatively or eX-
clamatively And very frequently
the portion perused must be gone
over in whole or in part to catch the
authors meaning, when, had the
sentences Sign menuaI' been in it's
proper place, the confusion would
have been avoided Terminal punct-
uation points were intended to be in
deXical We have simply put the
cart before the horse, and with
strange persistency refuse to reverse
the process Perhaps punctuation
point, like a good mule, ought to
work both ways, but it is in evidence
that it doesn't in it's present position
."Sight reading is the demand of
these busy days, and every effort to
facilitate it should be gladly re-
the zest of life For it stands for the
best of most of the real successes
?Now, Whv should we pa-sist longer
in this very awkward fashion Seems
as if our grammar.ans and rhet0mi-
clans should escape us from this
thTaldom We have discarded the
old-fashioned way of saving our ''let-
ters," and we no longer teach the
child to spell "a-g-g-r-a-n-d-i-z-e-
m-e-n-t," and then run the word
through its guessing machine for its
names sake We rather begin with
the so-called final syllable, and
proceed to the first, and when it is
reached the word is pronounced, and
properly, too This system has su-
perseded the ancient A-B-C method,
and today a SaVen-year-old child can
give pointers to the ten-year-old I'M
der the old regime What is urged
here is the same improved methods
in punctuation which have. wrought
such beneficial effects in other lines
The best, and only the best, is good
enough for us
The science and art Of punotua-
tion, if such they may be called, or
ig'inated with the Masorites during
THE reign of Tfberias The ancients
had small care for this sort of work
To them it was sufficient to create,
other might seek for the sense AS
is. well known, the Hebrew Bible is
written from right to left, and Cen
esis" is found next the back lid Aft
er the invention of printing the
markings came into gradual use The
>iiS PuDiiSoliOii9 COilldlI only OCcd-
sional or arbitrary markings The
present system of divisions, suhdi-.
visions and endings is an outgrowhh
of that practiced by the Venetian
Manutii
The day dawn Of the twentieth CEN
tury shall not have broken upon this
old earth before some Pollard or Fun
denburg shall have delivered us from
this foolish fashion which binds up in
chains and feters The press of the
country, in this as in other good things.
should lead the way In most pro-
gressive schools the newspaper has
taken the place of the readers. and
rightly so The South Carolina con-
stitutional amendments would have
been more modern and American had
thsy required ability to read and inter
pret present day questions as published
in our great dailies And the ability to
do this would indicate no mean order
of intelligence and bespeak a bedrock
of good citizenship ?If this is the des-
deratum which we bslieve it to be,
and if it is a step toward simplifying
the acquisition of knowledge, why
should Pittsburg not lead off in the
market Common sense seems to be
on our side of the question