ABSTRACT
Literacy was the product of a conservative educational tradition in which teaching was directed towards the preparation of pupils for effective public speaking. There is little evidence before the sixth century that guides to phrasing - punctuation originated with the author. No manuscript containing a work in the author's own handwriting has survived from Antiquity; this absence of autograph material has been attributed to the practice of dictating one's own works, letters, and even one's own notes, to amanuenses. The prehistory of punctuation as we understand it lies in the activities of the grammatici, the teachers who provided secondary education in the ancient world. The indication of pauses, which had previously been regarded as an ancillary apparatus of praelectio for the benefit of pupils or inexperienced readers, had acquired an enhanced status, and manuscripts pointed in this way became known as codices distincti.
