Punctuation's Weird Backstory | Otherwords

Video Description

Take our audience survey here: https://to.pbs.org/2025SurveyOTHR There was a time when written words were all scrunched together without any spaces or symbols to help the reader make sense of it. How did we get from that to this‽ Otherwords is a PBS web series on Storied that digs deep into this quintessential human trait of language and finds the fascinating, thought-provoking, and funny stories behind the words and sounds we take for granted. Incorporating the fields of biology, history, cultural studies, literature, and more, linguistics has something for everyone and offers a unique perspective on what it means to be human. Host: Erica Brozovsky, Ph.D. Creator/Director: Andrew Matthews & Katie Graham Writer: Andrew Matthews Producer: Katie Graham Editor/Animation: Andrew Matthews Executive Producer: Amanda Fox Fact Checker: Yvonne McGreevy Executive in Charge for PBS: Maribel Lopez Director of Programming for PBS: Gabrielle Ewing Assistant Director of Programming for PBS: John Campbell Stock Images from Shutterstock Music from APM Music Otherwords is a production of Spotzen for PBS Digital Studios. © 2025 PBS. All rights reserved. sources: Houston, Keith. Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks. W. W. Norton & Company, 2014. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20150902-the-mysterious-origins-of-punctuation https://aeon.co/essays/beside-the-point-punctuation-is-dead-long-live-punctuation https://carsonparkdesign.com/exclamation-points/ https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/history-and-use-of-the-apostrophe https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200217-have-we-murdered-the-apostrophe https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/29/crosswords/texting-punctuation-period.html