An essay on punctuation, 1785

by Joseph Robertson

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone

177 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1785

About the author

Joseph Robertson FSA (1810 - 1866) was a Scottish historian and record scholar.

He was educated at Udny parish school and afterwards at the grammar school and Marischal College, Aberdeen.

On leaving Marischal College he was apprenticed to an advocate, but soon showed a taste for literature, writing for the Aberdeen Magazine in 1831, and publishing under the name of John Brown, a Deeside coachman, in 1835, a Guide to Deeside, and in 1838 a guide to Aberdeen, called The Book of Bon Accord.

He founded the Spalding Club in 1839.

Reviews

[Alaina Sloo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book from the first time I opened it. Yes, it's a grammar on punctuation from 1785. But embedded in the examples of how to use the comma and the semi-colon is a whole world of English Enlightenment thinking, from astronomy to gastronomy to history to religion and philosophy and aesthetics. Especially interesting, I thought, were the science examples. Robertson tells us what his 18th-century contemporaries thought about bees, Halley's comet, and even why the skin of the people of Africa is dark.