Prithee the addressee, as in "if it please you," "prithee" accompanies a request which addresses itself to the threat of being answered in the negative, as though the request were against the addressee's wishes. Stated otherwise, the word "please" suggests that the person being addressed is willing to comply with the request, whereas the word "prithee" suggests that he or she is not willing. This switch from stating the speaker's contrary desire to stating the speaker's wish not to impose signaled a cultural shift in the English-speaking world in which politeness became stated negatively rather than positively. Wider repercussions are observable
Word divider a vertical line, whereas manuscripts used double dots (፡) resembling a colon. The latter practice continues today, though the space is making inroads. Classical Latin used the interpunct in both paper manuscripts and stone inscriptions (Wingo 1972:16). Ancient Greek orthography used between two and five dots as word separators, as well as the hypodiastole. In the modern Hebrew and Arabic alphabets, some letters have distinct forms at the ends and/or beginnings of words. This demarcation is used in addition to spacing. The Nastaʿlīq form of Islamic calligraphy uses vertical arrangement to separate words. The beginning of each word is written