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The syntactic status of English punctuation

This article presents a study of English punctuation theory in a historical perspective. I will argue that although the existing works on the history of English punctuation claim that there was a relation between syntax and punctuation as early as 1600, they do not give a clear picture of that relation and that they in particular fail to show how that relation developed into the modern system of punctuation. I will fill this gap by adding my own observations from a study of some normative sources in punctuation theory in the late eighteenth century in order to show the nature of the grammatical punctuation from which the present practice has developed.