A wedding dance at the Avon Ballroom on July 22nd for Mary Paterek and Virgil Loucks (imagine, a youth named Virgil, he must be the youngest Virgil in Minnesota, maybe the last of the Virgil line).

There be five manner of points and divisions most used among cunning men; the which if they be well used, make the sentence very light and easy to be understood, both to the reader and hearer: and they be these, virgil,—come,—parenthesis,—plain point,—interrogative... it is a slender stroke leaning forward, betokening a little short rest, without any perfectness yet of sentence.

No points were used by the ancient printers, excepting the colon and the period; but, after some time, a short oblique stroke, called a virgil, was introduced, which answered to the modern comma.

Whoever introduced the several points, it seems that a full-point, a point called come, answering to our colon-point, a point called virgil answering to our comma-point, the parenthesis-points and interrogative-point, were used at the close of the fourteenth, or beginning of the fifteenth century.

Other Chaucerian manuscripts had the virgule (or virgil or oblique: /) at the middle of lines.

Virgil

Meaning

Noun

Name

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