Making a Point Read Online Free

‘indolence’ in his readers. By the time of King Alfred the Great, at the end of the ninth century, the combined effect of political turmoil, Viking invasions, and general intellectual apathy had led to the virtual disappearance of sophisticated literacy. In one of his writings – the preface to the English translation of St Gregory’s Cura Pastoralis (‘Pastoral Care’) – Alfred contrasts the early days of Christianity in England with his own time, and bemoans the way learning has been lost:
So completely had it declined in England that there were very few people on this side of the Humber who could understand their service-books in English or translate even one written message from Latin into English, and I think there were not many beyond the Humber either. So few they were that I cannot think of even a single one south of the Thames when I came to the throne.
    He resolves to do something about it, initiating a programme of translation into English, and encouraging the learning of Latin.
    It’s a crucial turning-point. Suddenly, longer and more varied works begin to be written down in English, and to reach more people. Different styles emerge, both within poetry and prose. In poetry, we encounter long heroic narratives such as Beowulf alongside spiritual reflections such as The Dream of the Rood – early texts surviving in late manuscripts. In prose, we find political and legal texts such as laws, charters, and wills; religious texts such as prayers, homilies, and Bible translations; scientific texts dealing with medicine, botany, and folklore; and historical texts such as town records, lists of rulers, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle . There is much more to read, and many more people who want to read it. We are still centuries away from a world of reference where daily engagement with multiple texts is routine, where rapid and easy reading is essential, and where there is pressure on writers to express themselves clearly and effectively – ‘in plain English’, as it is often put. But the linguistic factors that enable us to be fluent literacy multi-taskers today can be traced back to the decisions made by writers a millennium ago. A stable orthography is one of these factors, and punctuation is the backbone of orthography.
    The punctuation marks we see in Old English manuscripts vary a great deal, depending on the handwriting style used, and they are often idiosyncratic; but certain general features can be observed. There was clearly a sense that words were important units of text. They are important not only in learning one’s mother-tongue (‘how many words do you know?’) but in learning another language (‘what’s the word for …?’). In a world where two languages work together with different functions – as Latin and English did in Anglo-Saxon times – the ability to identify and process words easily and quickly is paramount. Individual words come to the fore in inscriptions, glossaries, lists of names, year-dates, and many othercontexts. And in longer texts we see word-spaces supplemented by new signs to help readers identify where a word starts or where it ends.
    Sometimes simple pointing suffices, as if we were to write:
this·is·an·example·of·middle·dots
    Such ‘interpunct’ dots varied in height, influenced by the shape of the previous letter, but were usually at mid-level. They sometimes separated phrases rather than words, and even syllables within words. Their use is sporadic, working along with word-spaces in ways that are often difficult to interpret. In one line, they might suggest a pause; in another they might not. For example, in a tenth-century manuscript translation of Bede, we find a description of a solar eclipse:
ÞA·ÆS·GE·WORDENYMB
    syx hundyntra·feowersyxtig æft(er) drihtnes menniscnesse· eclipsis solis·þæt is sunnan·aspru ngennis·
    then was happened