問題詳情

III. Reading Comprehension 題組 26- 28    As readers and writers, we have become used to the existence of punctuation and could neverimagine what it would be like to do without punctuation. But that was not how things worked forthousands of years. In ancient Greece and Rome, politicians debated to promote their own views; asa result, texts were mostly memorized by politicians or speakers. Eloquent speech mattered more than written language. Under such circumstances, articles without spaces or punctuation were neveran issue.   It was not until 300 B.C. that things started to change. A librarian in Egypt named Aristophanesmade an important breakthrough by devising a simple system of punctuation to better help speakersunderstand the documents. With dots aligned to the middle (∙), bottom (.), and the top (·), the pausebetween words increased in length, which, respectively, roughly correspond to today’s comma, colon,and the period.   Unfortunately, when Romans took over the ancient world from Greeks, Aristophanes’ system ofdots was abandoned altogether. Things took a turn when the Roman Empire dissolved in the fourthand fifth century A.D. With the fall of the Roman Empire came Christianity. In contrast to paganswho passed on their cultures by words of mouth, Christians preferred to spread God’s words such aspsalms and gospels in written language. Decorative letters and paragraph marks, such as Γ, ¢, 7, ¶started to become an integral part of books. As the religion spread across Europe, writing started tobecome a dominant form of communication. In the 6th century, Christian writers would punctuatetheir works to protect the original meanings in the hands of different readers. Over time,Aristophanes’ little dots became prevalent and later modified. With the invention of the printingpress in the mid-1450s, the system of punctuation we use today was firmly cast in lead, with littlechange as centuries passed.
26. What is the main idea of this passage?
(A) How Romans adopted punctuation.
(B) How punctuation evolved with time.
(C) Why Romans did not adopt any punctuation system.
(D) Why Aristophanes’ punctuation system was not adopted.

參考答案

答案：B
難度：簡單0.857143
統計：A(1),B(6),C(0),D(0),E(0)

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