The Space Between Words: An Invention of Monks, by Morgane Afif 

By Morgane Afif, Aleteia, Jan. 30, 2024

The space between the words of a written text only entered into use in the 7th century, in the silence of Irish monasteries. Who would’ve thought that a space between words had to be invented? The first traces of written language are over 5,000 years old and come to us from the cradle of humanity, in Mesopotamia. However, writing is a form of language born several times over to succeed in transcribing the spoken word onto clay, stone, parchment, or paper. While writing hasn’t always existed, punctuation took an even longer time to develop, and the separation between words is a relatively late innovation.

In ancient Greek and Latin manuscripts, scriptio continua, or continuous writing, dominated: the eye glided along opaque blocks of letters, arranged in uniform, rectangular paragraphs. Reading was reserved for a select few, and the vast majority of the European population was illiterate. …

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