A01=Florence Hazrat
Author_Florence Hazrat
Category=CB
Category=CBX
Category=CFLA
david crystal
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forthcoming
gift books
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hieroglyphics
history of English
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lynne truss
mark forsyth
punctuation books
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Product details
- ISBN 9781800819566
- Dimensions: 153 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 30 Jul 2026
- Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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So. Good. So. Sharp. So. Clear. You. Need. This. Book. Period' Lucy Mangan, author of Bookish
Since the dawn of writing, punctuation has helped us tell our stories. Scribes in ancient Alexandria simplified their scrolls with full stops and commas, opening the doors of their library to the entire world. During the Renaissance, semicolons and exclamation marks empowered writers to satirise society and inject life and passion into their texts. Even today, the youngest generations creating new rules for emojis, caps and irony in the lexicon of online language.
In this riotous global history, Florence Hazrat reveals the creators and rebels who made punctuation what it is today, conjuring new meanings from commas and colons, parentheses and pilcrows. Witty and original, On the Mark journeys across the world and through the evolution of language, celebrating the silent marks that infuse our words with meaning and shape our literary cultures.
Dr Florence Hazrat is a researcher and writer, and a world expert on the history and culture of punctuation. A BBC New Generation Thinker, Dr Hazrat has appeared on Radio 4's Word of Mouth and writes the Substack Mind the Gap. Her first book, An Admirable Point, a cultural history of the exclamation mark, was published by Profile in 2022.
