Punctuation in a fifteenth-century Scientific Treatise (MS Cambridge L1.4.14)

Middle English punctuation has been neglected as the object of scholarly research until late in the twentieth century owing to its lack of standardization and seeming arbitrariness. However, this view has been recently revised with the publication of specific studies dealing with the punctuation system used by ME scribes. In this line, our investigation deals with the marks of punctuation found in a late ME astrological treatise with the following objectives: a) to obtain a complete catalogue of the uses and functions of punctuation symbols found; b) to discern whether these symbols are used rhetorically or grammatically; and c) to offer a proposal for their modernization. For this purpose, MS Cambridge L1.4.14 (n. 3) has been used as source of evidence.