Punctuation in Context - Past and Present Perspectives

This title is printed to order. This book may have been self-published. If so, we cannot guarantee the quality of the content. In the main most books will have gone through the editing process however some may not. We therefore suggest that you be aware of this before ordering this book. If in doubt check either the author or publisher’s details as we are unable to accept any returns unless they are faulty. Please contact us if you have any questions.

Punctuation is an integral element in writing and has been so for centuries. The present volume brings together approaches in linguistics, stylistics and other fields to highlight the rich repertoire of issues involved in the study of punctuation. The contributions to the book discuss the grammatical, pragmatic, rhetorical and stylistic functions of punctuation, such as encoding emotion, metalinguistic marking, foregrounding and paralinguistic indication. They also highlight the sensibility of punctuation to genre and the speech-writing continuum, as well as the important role punctuation plays for reader interpretation. They further demonstrate how punctuation conventions change in time. The data is drawn from English, with one investigation devoted to German.