Summary
From full stops to emojis, a Tudor letter to texting - how has the use of punctuation marks developed over the centuries? Florence Hazrat thinks about the way brackets help us understand the pandemic. The first parentheses appear in a 1399 manuscript by the Italian lawyer Coluccio Salutati, but - as her essay outlines - it took over 500 years for the sign born at the same time as the bracket, the exclamation mark (which printers rather aptly call “bang”) to find its true environment: the internet.
Florence Hazrat is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Sheffield. She is a 2021 New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to turn their research into radio. You can find a collection of Essays, discussions and features showcasing the research of New Generation Thinkers on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08zhs35
Producer: Robyn Read
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Can I just say? |
| 0:01.5 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast. |
| 0:04.0 | It's such a wonderful listen. |
| 0:05.6 | So nice. |
| 0:06.5 | There are loads more like it on BBC sounds. |
| 0:08.8 | Different paces, different heights. |
| 0:10.6 | The roof is buckling. |
| 0:11.9 | Where you can also listen to live sports commentary. |
| 0:14.2 | It's right foot goes for goal. |
| 0:16.7 | And then enjoy even more podcasts full of analysis and reaction to the big stories. |
| 0:21.6 | The stat that is astonishing is they ended with the lowest amount of possession. |
| 0:25.2 | And she's had to live with that. |
| 0:26.8 | So if you love sport, a passion, it's almost like a religion. |
| 0:29.7 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:31.7 | Sort of expecting that every week now. |
| 0:35.8 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:40.8 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:44.8 | Hello, I'm Florence Hazrat. |
| 0:46.7 | I study punctuation, and in this episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast, you can hear |
| 0:51.9 | my essay for Radio 3 called Pause for Thought. |
| 0:56.8 | On the 16th of October, 1586, a young man writes a desperate letter to his friend. |
| 1:04.9 | My dear Vaya, come, come, my life is in danger and I long to see you. |
... |
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