OBSERVATIONS.
OBS. 1.—It seems to be commonly supposed, whether correctly or not, that short sentences which are in themselves distinct, and which in their stated use must be separated by the period, may sometimes be rehearsed as examples, in so close succession as not to require this point: as, "But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."—SCOTT, ALGER, AND OTHERS: Matt., xix, 17, 18, 19. "The following sentences exemplify the possessive pronouns:—'My lesson is finished; Thy books are defaced; He loves his studies; She performs her duty; We own our faults; Your situation is distressing; I admire their virtues.'"—L. Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 55. What mode of pointing is best adapted to examples like these, is made a very difficult question by the great diversity of practice in such cases. The semicolon, with guillemets, or the semicolon and a dash, with the quotation marks, may sometimes be sufficient; but I see no good reason why the period should not in general be preferred to the comma, the semicolon, or the colon, where full and distinct sentences are thus recited. The foregoing passage of Scripture I have examined in five different languages, ten different translations, and seventeen different editions which happened to be at hand. In these it is found pointed in twelve different ways. In Leusden's, Griesbach's, and Aitton's Greek, it has nine colons; in Leusden's Latin from Montanus, eight; in the common French version, six; in the old Dutch, five; in our Bibles, usually one, but not always. In some books, these commandments are mostly or wholly divided by periods; in others, by colons; in others, by semicolons; in others, as above, by commas. The first four are negative, or prohibitory; the other two, positive, or mandatory. Hence some make a greater pause after the fourth, than elsewhere between any two. This greater pause is variously marked by the semicolon, the colon, or the period; and the others, at the same time, as variously, by the comma, the semicolon, or the colon. Dr. Campbell, in his Four Gospels, renders and points the latter part of this passage thus: "Jesus answered, 'Thou shalt not commit murder. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not give false testimony. Honour thy father and mother; and love thy neighbour as thyself." But the corresponding passage in Luke, xviii 20, he exhibits thus: "Thou knowest the commandments. Do not commit adultery; do not commit murder; do not steal; do not give false testimony; honour thy father and thy mother." This is here given as present advice, referring to the commandments, but not actually quoting them; and, in this view of the matter, semicolons, not followed by capitals may be right. See the common reading under Rule XIV for Capitals, on page 166.
OBS. 2.—Letters written for numbers, after the manner of the Romans, though read as words, are never words in themselves; nor are they, except perhaps in one or two instances, abbreviations of words. C, a hundred, comes probably from Centum; and M, a thousand, is the first letter of Mille; but the others, I, V, X, L, D, and the various combinations of them all, are direct numerical signs, as are the Arabic figures. Hence it is not really necessary that the period should be set after them, except at the end of a sentence, or where it is suitable as a sign of pause. It is, however, and always has been, a prevalent custom, to mark numbers of this kind with a period, as if they were abbreviations; as, "While pope Sixtus V. who succeeded Gregory XIII. fulminated the thunder of the church against the king of Navarre."—Smollet's Eng., iii, 82. The period is here inserted where the reading requires only the comma; and, in my opinion, the latter point should have been preferred. Sometimes, of late, we find other points set after this period; as, "Otho II., surnamed the Bloody, was son and successor of Otho I.; he died in 983."—Univ. Biog. Dict. This may be an improvement on the former practice, but double points are not generally used, even where they are proper; and, if the period is not indispensable, a simple change of the point would perhaps sooner gain the sanction of general usage.
OBS. 3.—Some writers, judging the period to be wrong or needless in such cases, omit it, and insert only such points as the reading requires; as, "For want of doing this, Judge Blackstone has, in Book IV, Chap. 17, committed some most ludicrous errors."—Cobbett's Gram., Let. XIX, ¶ 251. To insert points needlessly, is as bad a fault as to omit them when they are requisite. In Wm. Day's "Punctuation Reduced to a System," (London, 1847,) we have the following obscure and questionable RULE: "Besides denoting a grammatical pause, the full point is used to mark contractions, and is requisite after every abbreviated word, as well as after numeral letters."—Page 102. This seems to suggest that both a pause and a contraction may be denoted by the same point. But what are properly called "contractions," are marked not by the period, but by the apostrophe, which is no sign of pause; and the confounding of these with words "abbreviated," makes this rule utterly absurd. As for the period "after numeral letters," if they really needed it at all, they would need it severally, as do the abbreviations; but there are none of them, which do not uniformly dispense with it, when not final to the number; and they may as well dispense with it, in like manner, whenever they are not final to the sentence.
OBS. 4.—Of these letters, Day gives this account: "M. denotes mille, 1,000; D., dimidium mille, half a thousand, or 500; C. centum, 100; L. represents the lower half of C., and expresses 50; X. resembles V. V., the one upright, the other inverted, and signifies 10; V. stands for 5, because its sister letter U is the fifth vowel; and I. signifies 1, probably because it is the plainest and simplest letter in the alphabet."—Day's Punctuation, p. 103. There is some fancy in this. Dr. Adam says, "The letters employed for this purpose [i.e., to express numbers.] were C. I. L. V. X."—Latin and Eng. Gram., p. 288. And again: "A thousand is marked thus CI[C-reverserd], which in later times was contracted into M. Five hundred is marked thus, I[C-reversed], or by contraction, D."—Ib. Day inserts periods thus: "IV. means 4; IX., 9; XL., 40; XC., 90; CD., 400; CM., 900."—Page 703. And again: "4to., quarto, the fourth of a sheet of paper; 8vo., octavo, the eighth part of a sheet of paper; 12mo., duodecimo, the twelfth of a sheet of paper; N. L., 8°., 9'., 10''., North latitude, eight degrees, nine minutes, ten seconds."—Page 104. But IV may mean 4, without the period; 4to or 8vo has no more need of it than 4th or 8th; and N. L. 8° 9' 10'' is an expression little to be mended by commas, and not at all by additional periods.
OBS. 5.—To allow the period of abbreviation to supersede all other points wherever it occurs, as authors generally have done, is sometimes plainly objectionable; but, on the other hand, to suppose double points to be always necessary wherever abbreviations or Roman numbers have pauses less than final, would sometimes seem more nice than wise, as in the case of Biblical and other references. A concordance or a reference Bible pointed on this principle, would differ greatly from any now extant. In such references, numbers are very frequently pointed with the period, with scarcely any regard to the pauses required in the reading; as, "DIADEM, Job 29. 14. Isa. 28. 5. and 62. 3. Ezek. 21. 26."—Brown's Concordance. "Where no vision is, the people perish, Prov. xxix. 18. Acts iv. 12. Rom. x. 14."—Brown's Catechism, p. 104. "What I urge from 1. Pet. 3. 21. in my Apology."—Barclay's Works, iii, 498. "I. Kings—II. Kings."—Alger's Bible, p. iv. "Compare iii. 45. with 1. Cor. iv. 13."—Scott's Bible, Pref. to Lam. Jer. "Hen. v. A. 4. Sc. 5."—Butler's Gram., p. 41. "See Rule iii. Rem. 10."—Ib., p. 162. Some set a colon between the number of the chapter and that of the verse; which mark serves well for distinction, where both numbers are in Arabic figures: as, "'He that formed the eye, shall he not see?'—Ps. 94: 9."—Wells's Gram., p. 126. "He had only a lease-hold title to his service. Lev. 25: 39, Exod. 21: 2."—True Amer., i. 29. Others adopt the following method which seems preferable to any of the foregoing: "Isa. Iv, 3; Ezek. xviii, 20; Mic. vi, 7."—Gurney's Essays, p. 133. Churchill, who is uncommonly nice about his punctuation, writes as follows: "Luke. vi, 41, 42. See also Chap. xv, 8; and Phil., iii. 12."—New Gram., p. 353.
OBS. 6.—Arabic figures used as ordinals, or used for the numeral adverbs, first, or firstly, secondly, thirdly, &c., are very commonly pointed with the period, even where the pause required after them is less than a full stop; as, "We shall consider these words, 1. as expressing resolution; and 2. as expressing futurity."—Butler's Gram., p. 106. But the period thus followed by a small letter, has not an agreeable appearance, and some would here prefer the comma, which is, undoubtedly, better suited to the pause, A fitter practice, however, would be, to change the expression thus: "We shall consider these words, 1st, as expressing resolution; and, 2dly, as expressing futurity."
OBS. 7.—Names vulgarly shortened, then written as they are spoken, are not commonly marked with a period; as, Ben for Benjamin. "O RARE BEN JOHNSON!"—Biog. Dict.
"From whence the inference is plain,
Your friend MAT PRIOR wrote with pain."
—LLOYD: B. P., Vol. viii, p. 188.