On the Mark by Florence Hazrat review – a fascinating history of punctuation

This lavishly researched book shows that dots and dashes are an essential component of style, whether you’re a medieval monk or Donald Trump How do you feel about exclamation marks? Otherwise known as gaspers, screamers, dog’s cocks, or shrieks. In his Modern English Usage, Fowler said that using too many betrays an “uneducated or unpractised writer”. Martin Amis called them “joke badges”, and Theodor Adorno “soundless cymbal-crashing”. The novelist Elmore Leonard specified that you were allo...

By Steven Poole