Characters (computing) include, for example, common punctuation marks.
 However, the Greeks were sporadically using punctuation marks consisting of vertically arranged dotsusually two (dicolon) or three (tricolon)in around the 5th century BC as an aid in the oral delivery of texts
 As explained by writer and editor Lynne Truss, "The rise of printing in the 14th and 15th centuries meant that a standard system of punctuation was urgently required

