Особенности пунктуации в английском языке

Hyphenation is also routinely used to avoid unsightly spacing in justified texts (for example, in newspaper columns).

The first use of the hyphen—and its origination—is often credited to Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz, Germany circa 1455 with the publication of his 42-line Bible. Examination of an original copy on vellum (Hubay index #35) in the U. S Library of Congress shows that Gutenberg’s movable type was set justified in a uniform style, 42 equal lines per page.

The Gutenberg printing press required words made up of individual letters of type to be held in place by a surrounding non-printing rigid frame. Gutenberg solved the problem of making each line the same length to fit the frame by inserting a hyphen as the last element at the right side margin. This interrupted the letters in the last word, requiring the remaining letters be carried over to the start of the line below. His hyphen appears throughout the Bible as a short, double line inclined to the right at a 60-degree angle.

In medieval times and the early days of printing, the predecessor of the comma was a slash. As the hyphen ought not to be confused with this, a double-slash was used, this resembling an equals sign tilted like a slash. Writing forms changed with time, and included the full development of the comma, so the hyphen could become one horizontal stroke.

Those dictionaries based on the second edition of the Merriam-Webster dictionary used one small, slightly tilted slash for a hyphen which they added at the end of a line where they broke the word, but used a double-slash, much like the very old symbol, to indicate a hyphen that was actually a part of the phrase but just happened to fall at the end of the line. This double-slash would be used in hyphenated phrases in the middle of the text as well, so that there would be no confusion.

The slash is a sign, «/», used as punctuation mark and for various other purposes. It is also called a forward slash (especially to distinguish it from the backslash, «») or, in British English, a stroke. Other terms used, not all in common use, include virgule, diagonal, right-leaning stroke, oblique, oblique dash, oblique stroke, slant, separatrix, scratch comma, slak, or whack. However, the term «whack» is only technically correct when used to refer to the backslash (««). In Unicode, the slash is called a solidus (U+002F), even though the slash is usually distinguished from the solidus (or shilling mark), in that the former is more nearly vertical.

This symbol goes back to the days of ancient Rome. In the early modern period, in the Fraktur script, which was widespread through Europe in the Middle Ages, one slash (/) represented a comma, while two slashes (//) represented a dash. The two slashes eventually evolved into a sign similar to the equals sign (=), then being further simplified to a single dash or hyphen (-).

The most common use of the slash is to replace the hyphen or en dash to make clear a strong joint between words or phrases, such as «the Hemingway/Faulkner generation». Often it is used to represent the concept «or», especially in instruction books. Its other common usage represents the concept of «and» .

The slash is also used to indicate a line break when quoting multiple lines from a poem, play, or headline. In this case, a space is placed before and after the slash. For example: «Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, / But bears it out even to the edge of doom». In an ordinary prose quotation, such a spaced slash is sometimes used to represent the start of a new paragraph.

British English particularly makes use of the slash instead of the hyphen in forming abbreviations. Many examples are found in writings during the Second World War. For example, 'S/E' means 'single-engined', as a quick way of writing a type of aircraft. And in the USA, «O/O» is used by trucking firms or taxi-cabs to mean «owner-operator» (or «owned and operated by»). Notice that the phrase has a hyphen, whereas the abbreviation uses the slash.

In the USA Government, office names are abbreviated using slashes, starting with the larger office and following with its subdivisions. In the State Department, the Office of Commercial & Business Affairs in the Bureau for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs is referred to as EEB/CBA.

The slash is often used, perhaps incorrectly, to separate the letters in a two-letter initialism such as R/C (short for radio control) or w/o (without). Purists strongly discourage this newer use of the symbol. However, since other uses of the slash with individual characters are highly context-specific, confusion is not likely to arise. Other examples include b/w (between or, sometimes, black and white), w/e (whatever, also weekend or week ending), i/o (input-output), and r/w (read-write).

The slash is used in some abbreviations such as w/ (with). The slash is also used to avoid taking a position in a naming controversy, allowing the juxtaposition of both names without stating a preference. An example is the designation «Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac» in the official US census, reflecting the Syriac naming dispute. The Swedish census has come to a similar solution, using Assyrier/Syrianer to refer to the same ethnic group.

There are usually no spaces either before or after a slash. Exceptions are in representing the start of a new line when quoting verse, or a new paragraph when quoting prose. The Chicago Manual od Style (at 6.112) also allows spaces when either of the separated items is a compound that itself includes a space: Our New Zealand / Western Australia trip. (Compare use of an en dash used to separate such compounds.) The Canadian Style: A Guide to Writing and Editing prescribes «No space before or after an oblique when used between individual words, letters or symbols; one space before and after the oblique when used between longer groups which contain internal spacing», giving the examples «n/a» and «Language and Society / Langue et société» .

Certain shorthand date formats use / as a delimiter, for example «9/16/2003» (in United States usage) or in most other countries «16/9/2003» September 16, 2003.

In the UK there used to be a specialised use in prose: 7/8 May referred to the night which starts the evening of 7 May and ends the morning of 8 May, totalling about 12 hours depending on the season. This was used to list night-bombing air-raids which would carry past midnight. Some police units in the USA use this notation for night disturbances or chases. Conversely, the form with a hyphen, 7−8 May, would refer to the two-day period, at most 48 hours. This would commonly be used for meetings.

The International Standard ISO 8601, in attempting to resolve this ambiguity, introduced problems of its own. According to this norm, dates must be written year-month-day using hyphens, but time periods are written as two standard dates separated by a slash: 1939;09−01/1945;05−08, for example, would be the duration of the Second World War in the European theatre, while 09−03/12−22 might be used for the autumn term of a northern-hemisphere school, from September the third to December the twenty-second. Instead of the slash in some applications a double hyphen is used, e.g. 1939;09−01—1945;05−08, which would allow the use of the duration in filenames.

CONCLUSION

Having investigated theoretical and practical material on the given theme we can achieve the following results:

1) We gave the definition of punctuation marks;

2) We analyzed the classification of punctuation marks, particularly apostrophe as a detached punctuation mark; external punctuation marks; internal punctuation marks; emissive punctuation marks;

3) We investigated the usage of different punctuation marks in English literature;

4) We examined common and special cases of punctuation usage.

5) We analyzed the cases of omitting of punctuation marks in literature;

6) We examined the interaction of graphic marks and sounding in speech and literature.

We have examined all the most important and usual punctuation marks in their usage. Main conclusions we could make are:

1. The using of punctuation marks frequently breaks the general rules. It happens according to following purpose of writer:

when the writer wants to make his writing immediately understandable and to help his readers better grasp the meaning of his utterance. We showed how important to use right commas or hyphen to avoid misreading or readers' confusion;

when the writer wants to emphasize something that he considers important, he can ignore the rules and create an occasional usage (like in cases with using colon before extremely short quotation, or using quotation marks to express irony or sarcasm, or using extra exclamation or question marks to express writer’s feelings). It seems also that punctuation is connected with intonation to a greater extent than in Russian (see cases with quotation expressing emotions or opinions);

when there is option of free choice (like in cases with using single or double quotations or using upper case or lower case letters in headlines);

there are situations, when a writer does not notice difference in meaning, which is made because of the using of the punctuation marks, but he should notice it to avoid misreading (like in sentence To eat, children need smaller utensils. Of course, the meaning would be obvious without a comma too, but it could make undesirable re-readings of this part);

arrangement of the punctuation marks influences on appearance of the text, so the writer could want make text more attractive for readers and use for it occasional combination of punctuation marks (like in case with the using square brackets within the round ones).

2. However, there are punctuation rules covering large part of speech cases, and it is utterly necessary to know them to create own right texts.

3. There are many changes in the course of time. For example now there are differences between em dashes, en dashes and hyphen, which did not exist a while ago, before typewriting had spread.

4. There are many cases, when we have not any rules, but publishing-houses provide us with an option of choice between two variations. It means that rules for punctuation are still not completely uniform. They change over time and according to their location.

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