Aristophanes of Byzantium needed to complete each fragment of text when reading aloud (not to comply with rules of grammar, which were not applied to punctuation marks until thousands of years later). For a short passage (a "komma"), a "stigmḕ mésē" dot was placed mid-level (·). This is the origin of the modern comma punctuation mark, and its name. For a longer passage (a "kolon"), a "hypostigmḗ" dot was placed level with the bottom of the text (.), similar to a modern colon or semicolon, and for very long pauses ("periodos"), a "stigmḕ teleía" point near the top of the line of text
Irony punctuation mark was used earlier by Marcellin Jobard in an article dated June 11, 1841, and commented in an 1842 report. Hervé Bazin, in his 1966 essay "Plumons l'Oiseau" (“Let's pluck the bird”), used the Greek letter ψ with a dot below for the same purpose . In the same work, the author proposed five other innovative punctuation marks: the “doubt point” , “conviction point” , “acclamation point” , “authority point” , and “love point” . In March 2007, the Dutch foundation CPNB "(Collectieve Propaganda van het Nederlandse Boek)" presented another design of an irony mark, the "ironieteken": (). Tom Driberg