ABSTRACT This article explores paratextual references to punctuation (pointing) in prologues, title pages and errata lists in Late Middle and (early) Early Modern English texts. The aim is to discern what this paratextual evidence may reveal about text and book producers’ ideas about the purposes of punctuation and their attitudes to its (correct/incorrect) application in reading and writing during a period which largely predates the publication of theoretical works on punctuation. The three paratextual elements (prologues, title pages and errata lists) were chosen because they serve partly different kinds of communicative function in the book. The primary sources for the study of prologues include both manuscript and printed texts; for title pages and errata lists, the research is based on sixteenth-century printed materials obtained from the Early English Books Online database. The findings highlight some particular kinds of writing in which correct punctuation seems to have mattered to such an extent that text producers chose to alert the reader to it paratextually, for example devotional and liturgical texts intended for (communal) oral delivery. Paratextual statements concerning punctuation may include comments on the punctuation system in the actual material text/book at hand (a manuscript copy or a printed edition) or relate to the benefits of correct punctuation more generally. The infrequent inclusion of faulty punctuation in the studied sample of approximately fifty errata lists might be partly explained by visual and typographical constraints that affected the capacity of such lists to express corrections addressing punctuation.

中文翻译：

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“命中在很多地方都是假的”：早期英语序言、标题页和勘误表中标点符号的副文本交流

摘要 本文探讨了中世纪晚期和（早期）早期现代英语文本中序言、标题页和勘误表中标点符号（指向）的副文本引用。目的是辨别这种副文本证据可能揭示关于文本和书籍制作者关于标点符号目的的想法以及他们对标点符号在阅读和写作中（正确/不正确）应用的态度在很大程度上早于理论著作出版之前的时期标点。选择三个副文本元素（序言、标题页和勘误表）是因为它们在本书中起到了部分不同类型的交流功能。序言研究的主要来源包括手稿和印刷文本；对于标题页和勘误表，该研究基于从早期英语在线图书数据库中获得的 16 世纪印刷材料。研究结果强调了某些特定类型的写作，其中正确的标点符号似乎很重要，以至于文本制作者选择以副文本的方式提醒读者注意它，例如用于（公共）口头传递的虔诚和礼仪文本。关于标点符号的副文本陈述可能包括对手头实际材料文本/书籍（手稿副本或印刷版）中标点符号系统的评论，或者更广泛地涉及正确标点符号的好处。