Apostrophes, commas, hyphens…Punctuation can be a real pain in the semi-colon. We all know commas save lives (Let’s eat grandma!) but do you know the difference between a Monkey’s tail and an Interrobang? In honour of National Punctuation Day (September 24th in America) we’re delving into the weird and wonderful world of punctuation…
1 Did you know that in the Netherlands an @ symbol is called a monkey’s tail, in Russia it’s a little dog, and in Israel it’s a strudel. Delicious!
2 The exclamation mark may be a sign of excitement but it originally comes from the Latin io, meaning joy, which was written as a lower case i with o underneath. Over time the symbols merged and the exclamation mark was born!
3 We owe the full stop, among many other things, to the Romans. Previously writing ran together without breaks until the Romans added circles to show where the breaks were.
4 The humble comma is named after the Greek “komma” which literally means something which has been cut off, i.e. a clause.
5 The ?!, a mixture of a question mark and exclamation mark, is called an interrobang and denotes a question asked excitedly. It fell out of favour in the past but is ripe for a renaissance?!
When it comes to stickers though we don’t mind if it’s ‘Mrs Jones’ Star Award’ or Mr Thomas’s Super Star!’ Just let us know your name and where you’d like your apostrophe and we’ll send your personalised stickers ready to reward and motivate your students. Take a dash (or is it a hyphen?) over to our website to look at our whole personalised sticker range.
Facts courtesy of https://www.sheknows.com/living/articles/1081286/weird-funny-and-true-facts-about-punctuation/