Pŭnc-tu-ā'tion, n.

n. [Fr. ponctuation, Sp. puntuacion, It. puntuazione.] (Gram.) The act or art of punctuating or pointing a writing or discourse, or the act or art of marking with points the divisions of a discourse into sentences, and clauses or members of a sentence.

Punctuation, as the term is usually understood, is performed with four points, namely, the period [.], the colon [:], the semicolon [;], and the comma [,]. The other points used in composition are chiefly of a rhetorical and syntactical nature. The ancients were unacquainted with punctuation: they wrote without any distinction of members, periods, or words. The modern points came into use very gradually after the invention of printing. The first printed books have only arbitrary marks here and there, and it was not until the 16th century that an approach was made to the present system by the Manutii of Venice.