Commas, em dashes, apostrophes, and interrobangs. We use them for timing, for grammar, and even for social purposes. But these little marks didn’t just arise overnight. Dr Florence Hazrat fills us in on the history and meaning of these symbols. Florence is the author of On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Remade the World.
Timestamps
00:00 Start
01:48 Intros and hot punctuation takes
06:13 Patreon plug: It’s OnlyFans for your brain
11:37 News: Irish citizenship test
17:35 News: Bonobo compositionality maybe not a thing
22:36 Side note: How does disconfirmation feel?
26:26 News: Analogies increase fidelity in language transmission
36:34 News: The Internet Archive is saving news footage
39:30 Related or Not: Theme from Camden
40:14 Related or Not 1: stick
44:32 Related or Not 2: vacation, vaccine, vacuum
46:10 Related or Not 3: Spot the pair
52:57 Interview with Florence Hazrat, author of On the Mark
55:09 Getting into punctuation
56:44 Punctuation is about prosody and…?
01:02:26 Misconceptions and playfulness in punctuation
01:04:45 Who were the heavy hitters in punctuation?
01:08:36 Punctuation as a democratising force
01:11:38 Hyphens and identity
01:14:59 English puts hyphens and spaces everywhere
01:20:14 How is digital communication changing punctuation?
01:23:57 Of dashes both em and en
01:30:33 Which punctuation marks have disappeared?
01:35:48 What punctuation should we be using, but don’t?
01:38:15 Does punctuation help reading comprehension?
01:46:11 Conscious punctuation
01:49:19 Word of the Week: parachute
01:54:34 Word of the Week: Lake America
01:56:09 Word of the Week: doom trolling
02:05:44 Word of the Week: Naoero
02:06:46 Comment from Scott: Soo-ey! and Shakespeare
02:08:42 The Reads
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Patreon supporters
Thanks to all our patrons! Here are our patrons at the Supporter level.
Which punctuation mark will be the closest to their name? Numbers are the edit distance
and sign
&
- Andy B (4)
- Nasrin (4)
- Hedvig (4)
- Amanita (5)
- Ignacio (6)
apostrophe
‘
- Andy from Logophilius (14)
asterisk
*
- LordMortis (8)
at sign
@
- Kevin (4)
- Amir (4)
- O Tim (4)
backtick
`
- Becky (5)
bullet
•
- Ben (4)
- Molly Dee (5)
care of
℅
- Chris L (4)
- Martha (4)
caret
^
- Larry (3)
- James (3)
- Daryl (3)
- Manú (4)
- Kathy (4)
- Laura (4)
- Amy (4)
- Lance (4)
- Canny Archer (7)
colon
:
- Helen (3)
- Colleen (3)
- Joanna (4)
- Fiona (4)
- Tony (4)
- Wolfdog (4)
- John K (4)
- Mignon (4)
- Nikoli (5)
comma
,
- Lyssa (4)
- Rosemary (5)
dagger
†
- Rodger (3)
- Daniel (3)
- Diego (4)
- Heather (4)
- David B (4)
diameter
⌀
- Kristofer (6)
en dash
–
- Elias (3)
- LingAnth (5)
grave accent
`
- gramaryen (5)
guillemet
«»
- Ariaflame (6)
hybrid
×
- Xekri (4)
- J0HNTR0Y (6)
hyphen
–
- Sydney (4)
- Whitney (5)
lozenge
◊
- Florence Hazrat (9)
manicule
☞
- Sonic Snejhog (8)
minus sign
−
- Linguistic Chaos (10)
paragraph mark
¶
- PharaohKatt (7)
parenthesis
(
- meredith, musing (but honorary comma) (8)
- Faux Frenchie (8)
period
.
- Keith (4)
- Yevaud (4)
pipe
|
- Rene (3)
- Nigel (3)
- Luis (4)
- Lucy (4)
sextile
⚹
- Steele (4)
slash
/
- Stan (3)
- Rach (3)
- Ayesha (4)
- sæ̃m (5)
tilde
~
- Aldo (3)
And our newest patrons:
- New Supporters! 🎉 David B and LingAnth
- At the Listener level: liŋgwɪstɪks&lɪt
- At the Friend level: unleashy and Gage
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Here’s that extra table that Ben was talking about. It’s the number of characters in your name that you could plausibly turn into punctuation. Presented for interest only.
| Linguistic Chaos | |!ngu!$+!((h@°$ | 11 |
| Andy from Logophilius | @nd?fr°m|°g°ph!|!u$ | 10 |
| Florence Hazrat | f|°ren(eh@zr@+ | 6 |
| LordMortis | |°rdm°r+!$ | 6 |
| PharaohKatt | ph@r@°hk@++ | 6 |
| Sonic Snejhog | $°n!( $nejh°g | 6 |
| Amanita | @m@n!+@ | 5 |
| Ariaflame | @r!@f|@me | 5 |
| Canny Archer | (@nn?@r(her | 5 |
| Ignacio | !gn@(!° | 5 |
| Lyssa | |?$$@ | 5 |
| Ayesha | @?e$h@ | 4 |
| Chris L | (hr!$| | 4 |
| Colleen | (°||een | 4 |
| Elias | e|!@$ | 4 |
| Faux Frenchie | f@u×fren(h!e | 4 |
| Kristofer | kr!$+°fer | 4 |
| meredith, musing | mered!+hmu$!ng | 4 |
| Molly Dee | m°||?dee | 4 |
| Nikoli | n!k°|! | 4 |
| Rosemary | r°$em@r? | 4 |
| Aldo | @|d° | 3 |
| Daniel | d@n!e| | 3 |
| Daryl | d@r?| | 3 |
| David B | d@\/!db | 3 |
| Fiona | f!°n@ | 3 |
| gramaryen | gr@m@r?en | 3 |
| Joanna | j°@nn@ | 3 |
| Kathy | k@+h? | 3 |
| Lance | |@n(e | 3 |
| Larry | |@rr? | 3 |
| Laura | |@ur@ | 3 |
| Lucy | |u(? | 3 |
| Luis | |u!$ | 3 |
| Martha | m@r+h@ | 3 |
| Nasrin | n@$r!n | 3 |
| O Tim | °+!m | 3 |
| Stan | $+@n | 3 |
| Steele | $+ee|e | 3 |
| Sydney | $?dne? | 3 |
| Tony | +°n? | 3 |
| Whitney | wh!+ne? | 3 |
| Wolfdog | w°|fd°g | 3 |
| Yevaud | ?e\/@ud | 3 |
| Amir | @m!r | 2 |
| Amy | @m? | 2 |
| Andy B | @nd?b | 2 |
| Becky | be(k? | 2 |
| Diego | d!eg° | 2 |
| Heather | he@+her | 2 |
| Hedvig | hed\/!g | 2 |
| J0HNTR0Y | j0hn+r0? | 2 |
| James | j@me$ | 2 |
| Keith | ke!+h | 2 |
| Kevin | ke\/!n | 2 |
| Mignon | m!gn°n | 2 |
| Nigel | n!ge| | 2 |
| Rach | r@(h | 2 |
| Xekri | ×ekr! | 2 |
| Helen | he|en | 1 |
| John K | j°hnk | 1 |
| Manú | m@nú | 1 |
| Rodger | r°dger | 1 |
| sæ̃m | $æ̃m | 1 |
| Ben | ben | 0 |
| Rene | rene | 0 |
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Become a Patron!Show notes
Why does French have circumflex letters?
https://thelanguagecloset.com/2022/05/21/french-circumflex-circonflexe/
Citizenship rules to be tightened with longer residency and language test
https://www.thejournal.ie/irish-citizenship-residency-changes-7154915-Sep2026/
White Australia policy | National Museum Australia
https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/white-australia-policy
Dictation test passages used in 1925 | National Archives of Australia
https://www.naa.gov.au/students-and-teachers/learning-resources/learning-resource-themes/society-and-culture/migration-and-multiculturalism/dictation-test-passages-used-1925
[PDF] Aspects of Racism in the Australian Context: Issues of Definition and Action
Minister for External Affairs Atlee Hunt, in a 1903 memo to his staff: “It is not desirable that [coloured] persons should be allowed to pass the test . . . and before putting it to anyone the Officer should be satisfied that he will fail. If he is considered likely to pass the test if put in English, it should be applied in some other language of which he is ignorant.”
https://www7.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AUJlHRights/1994/9.pdf
Structure without semantics: no evidence for bonobo compositionality in Berthet et al. (2025)
https://peerj.com/articles/21651/
Holding, Thomas, Paul E. Smaldino, and Charlotte O. Brand. “Analogies Evolve by Increasing Transmission Fidelity in the Communication of Complex Information.” Evolutionary Human Sciences 8 (2026): e32.
https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2026.10063.
TV News Search & Borrow | Internet Archive
https://archive.org/details/tv
Jethro Tull – Aqualung (Instrumental)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVcsLJ3mixQ
Catherine the Great was inoculated against smallpox in a risky experiment. It changed Russia’s history
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-22/catherine-the-great-russian-empress-inoculation-thomas-dinsdale/101405692
On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Remade the World, by Florence Hazrat
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/florence-hazrat/on-the-mark/9781541606494/?lens=basic-books
(5:21) On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Remade the World, by Florence Hazrat
Richard Artschwager, Exclamation Point (Yellow), 2001
http://www.dreamideamachine.com/?p=81116
Broken Swedish words (split by accidental spaces) breaking translations
https://forum.readlang.com/t/broken-swedish-words-split-by-accidental-spaces-breaking-translations/5256
Tear Drops and Roses: Persian Punctuation by Florence Hazrat
https://mindthegap1.substack.com/p/tear-drops-and-roses-persian-punctuation
Irony punctuation | Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation
Mind the Gap | Florence Hazrat on Sunstack
https://mindthegap1.substack.com
Florence Hazrat on Instagram (@thepunctuationlady)
https://www.instagram.com/thepunctuationlady/
Labor’s Secret Harbour by-election loss is ominous
https://redflag.org.au/article/labors-secret-harbour-by-election-loss-is-ominous/
Political Parties, book by Duverger | Brittanica
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Political-Parties
Political parties : their organization and activity in the modern state, by Duverger, Maurice, 1917- | Internet Archive
https://archive.org/details/politicalparties0000duve/page/n9/mode/2up?q=parachuting
History of a concept: ‘Parachute’ candidates, an old electoral practice of politics taking precedence over roots
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/history/article/2022/06/17/history-of-a-concept-parachute-candidates-an-old-electoral-practice-of-politics-priming-over-roots_5987200_157.html
Parachute candidate | Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parachute_candidate
Trump signs order to rename Lake Ontario ‘Lake America’ amid Canada trade war
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/27/trump-canada-lake-america-ontario.html
Google engineer claims AI technology LaMDA is sentient
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-13/google-ai-lamda-sentient-engineer-blake-lemoine-says/101147222
OpenAI IPO will not happen in 2026 amid AI safety fears, Sam Altman says
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/12/openai-delays-ipo-sam-altman-ai-safety-concerns
Dear AI Companies: Stop the “Doom Trolling”
https://calnewport.com/dear-ai-companies-stop-the-doom-trolling/
Cal Newport: Dear AI Companies: Stop the “Doom Trolling”
https://youtu.be/aHxwZEXHwps?si=7K5dLhu34NIRPRqm
The Thrill of Wanting AI to Destroy the World
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/09/ai-destroy-world-apocalypse/688575/
Nauru officially changes its name to Naoero
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/03/nauru-officially-changes-its-name-to-naoero
Shakespeare in the Bush
Bohannon, Laura (1971), from Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology, eds. James P. Spradley and David W. McCurdy Boston: Little Brown and Company.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060613143803/http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/~idris/Essays/Shakes_in_Bush.htm
List of typographical symbols and punctuation marks | Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_typographical_symbols_and_punctuation_marks
Transcript
Coming soon.