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19th century punctuation


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I'm currently reading "A Short History of the Confederate States of America" by Jefferson Davis himself.  It was originally copyrighted in 1890 by Davis, but my copy is a 2004 reprint.  In fact, I bought it when I was traveling to Mississippi and took a few hours to visit Davis' estate.

 

My question pertains to punctuation in the 19th century, specifically, the semicolon.  Davis uses it exactly as we do today; however, there is always a space immediately before and after the semicolon.  In modern usage, there is only a space after, but not before.  This does not occur with commas, periods, or any other punctuation.  It only occurs with semicolons.

 

So is this a function of having a reprint?  Or was it standard usage in the 19th century to add the extra space before the semicolon?

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3 minutes ago, Sixgun Sheridan said:

The only thing that annoyed me about the old way of printing waf the tendency to ufe an f in place of an s in wordf.

 

I am in agreement with you there. If I remember correctly, when we toured the National Archives, the tour guide explained that they used the f to represent a long s sound and a s to represent a short s sound. Now I must be just an complete degenerate because I couldn't tell the difference between a long s and short s either way! (Which may be the reason that we no longer use it today!) 

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It's not an F.

 

Look at the first S in Congress. The tail beneath the line curves BACKWARDS, just like the lower curve of an S. All it is, is a slanted, stretched S.

 

iStock_000007427085Large-VYAJ.jpg&w=1484

 

 

Now drop down to the line below that, where it says CITY OF NEW YORK, then the line below that, where it ssys FOURTH OF MARCH.

 

The tail beneath the line, on all three Fs, curves forward. Just as it does with a normal cursive F of today.

 

Then we have the F in Bill OF Rights. The tail does curve backwards. BUT, the F goes straight up snd down. The S is slanted. Also the F has a cross bar. The S  doesn't.

 

 

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On 5/9/2019 at 9:34 AM, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said:

I think modern usage never puts a space before a punctuation.  Writing has evolved, for better or worse.

 

i think of going back to my hot lead days but I can’t think of a reason there.

Yeah...that's pretty much exactly what I said about modern usage.  My question was about 19th century usage.

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20 hours ago, Sixgun Sheridan said:

The only thing that annoyed me about the old way of printing waf the tendency to ufe an f in place of an s in wordf.

 

Yeah...that was an 18th century construct.  My question was about 19th century.

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