Punctuation centuries meant that a standard system of punctuation was urgently required." The introduction of a standard system of punctuation has also been attributed to the Venetian printers Aldus Manutius and his grandson. They have been credited with popularizing the practice of ending sentences with the colon or full stop, inventing the semicolon, making occasional use of parentheses and creating the modern comma by lowering the virgule. By 1566, Aldus Manutius the Younger was able to state that the main object of punctuation was the clarification of syntax. By the 19th century, punctuation in the western world had evolved "to classify
General Punctuation presentation. The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the General Punctuation block: General Punctuation General Punctuation is a Unicode block containing punctuation, spacing, and formatting characters for use with all scripts and writing systems. Included are the defined-width spaces, joining formats, directional formats, smart quotes, archaic and novel punctuation such as the interobang, and invisible mathematical operators. Additional punctuation characters are in the Supplemental Punctuation block and sprinkled in dozens of other Unicode blocks. The General Punctuation block contains two emoji: U+203C and U+2049. The block has four standardized variants defined to specify