Punteggiare la comunicazione e comunicare la punteggiatura

The purpose of this article is to examine the effects of the printing revolution on the ways in which writers shaped the communicativeness of their own texts. The manuscript culture of classical and medieval times had accustomed readers to use texts which had been written according to rules for abbreviation and punctuation devised and customised by different intellectual communities following standard rhetorical precepts, such as the advice to divide the text up into shorter sections in order to make it easier to memorise. Printing on the other hand resulted in the need for texts which were sufficiently autonomous for use among an anonymous readership. The transition led to the replacement of an ‘aural’ system of punctuation with a ‘visual’ one; at the same time the development encouraged the composition and publication of punctuation manuals which thus closed, so to speak, the circle of communication created by printing.