Whatever happened to the punctus? [punctuation studies]

Why is there such a paucity of academic literature on medieval punctuation? Is it (as Reimer, 1998, suggested)

“[…] partly because there is so much evidence which needs to be studied, and partly because editors of texts have considered the effort needed to be a waste of time”?

For a discussion of the subject, turn to the work of Dr Nadia Obegi Gallardo, a research fellow of the Department of English Philology at the University of Málaga, Spain, who has analysed a hand written text (on vellum) which is archived at Cambridge University Library – MS Ll. 4. 14. (n. 3).

The analyses showed that the most common punctuation marks were:

The punctus (or upper stop)  ·  followed by the double punctus (or colon)  :  the paragraph mark  ¶  and the virgula suspensiva  /

See: Punctuation in a fifteenth-century Scientific Treatise (MS Cambridge L1. 4.14) in Linguistica e Filologia, 22, (2006)

Bonus [optional]: Has the time come to revive the use of the punctus? If so, we provide some, like this one · below. Any or all of which can freely be cut-and-pasted into modern-day texts of your choice.

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