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
What Is a Nation? French citizen has to have forgotten the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, or the massacre that took place in the South in the thirteenth century. While many nations, such as France, begin with a feudal regime such as a monarchy, others, such as the United States and Switzerland, are formed by acts of consensual aggregation. France and many others, however, survived their feudal roots while maintaining their identity. Renan inquires what is the organizing principle? It can't be race, because France is "Celt, Iberian, German...The most noble countries, England, France and Italy, are the ones where the blood is most mixed."