EPISODE · Jan 7, 2024 · 1H
278 - An Admirable Point - Florence Hazrat
from You Are Not So Smart · host David McRaney, Florence Hazrat
On this episode we learn about the history of the exclamation point, the question mark, and the semicolon (among many other aspects of language) with Florence Hazrat, a scholar of punctuation, who, to my great surprise, informed me that while a lot of language is the result of a slow evolution, a gradual ever-changing process, punctuation in the English language is often an exception to this – for instance, a single person invented the semicolon; they woke up and the semicolon didn’t exist, and then went to bed that night, and it did!Florence Hazrat's WebsiteAn Admirable PointHow Minds ChangeDavid McRaney’s TwitterYANSS TwitterShow NotesNewsletter Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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On this episode we learn about the history of the exclamation point, the question mark, and the semicolon (among many other aspects of language) with Florence Hazrat, a scholar of punctuation, who, to my great surprise, informed that while a lot of language is the result of a slow evolution, a gradual ever-changing process, punctuation in the English language is often an exception to this – for instance, a single person invented the semicolon; they woke up and the semicolon didn’t exist, and then went to bed that night, and it did!
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278 - An Admirable Point - Florence Hazrat
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