148: On the Mark (with Florence Hazrat)

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 (5:21) On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Remade the World 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 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 (01:39:46) All over me On the Mark: Apple Books link https://books.apple.com/us/book/on-the-mark/id6755950089 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 Coxon tweet https://x.com/hilbertspaess/status/2097476196791709843 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 Timnit Gebru tweet https://x.com/timnitGebru/status/2098289939217846660 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