Originally published on August 12, 2026 (Episode 470)
Introduction
Even that overlooked yet essential little pinprick at the end of this sentence has a history. For once upon a time, there were no stops or periods. And therefore there were no sentences, at least as we conceive them now. “Changes in punctuation,” writes my guest Florence Hazrat, “like changes in language, are normal, but they’re also important reflections of our values.”
They are also, perhaps, indications of how we reframe the realities that we create with words. In her new book On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Changed the World, Hazrat ranges from cuneiform and Cicero to uncial and Shakespeare, and beyond, attending to how we have chosen to shape our sentences, and why. “From neuroscience to law, colonialism to love, punctuation exerts an enormous hidden power over our internal and external lives.”
About the Guest
Florence Hazrat is a writer, researcher, and educator fascinated by anything that has to do with language, writing, culture, and society—and by dogs. She is the author of An Admirable Point: A Brief History of the Exclamation Mark! as well as On the Mark. Her research examines how seemingly small features of written language reveal larger changes in society, politics, and human thought.
For Further Investigation
Florence Hazrat, On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs (Basic Books, 2026)
—, An Admirable Point: A Brief History of the Exclamation Mark! (Godine, 2023)
Malcolm B. Parkes, Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West (Routledge, 1992)
Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (Routledge, 2013)
Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves (Avery, 2006)
John Harris, Punctuation Personified (1824), from The Public Domain Review
Related Episodes
Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: Amanda Podany on 3,000 years of the Ancient Near East (where all this punctuation business started)
Offa the King: Rory Naismith on a forgotten King, with some discussion of manuscripts, literacy, and early medieval England.
Book Makers: Adam Smyth on the Lives Behind the Printed Page
The History of Technology, from Leonardo to the Internet: Thomas J. Misa on how technologies reshape societies and cultures–and how culture shapes technology
