The semicolon is a separating punctuation mark. The semicolon was first introduced by the Italian printer Ald Manucius, who used it to separate opposing words as well as independent parts of sentences. Since then, the semicolon (not only in this designation) has become widely used in the ordinary writing of different peoples.
Semicolon in Europe
In Europe, the semicolon was first introduced at the end of the 14th century by the Italian publisher and typographer Ald Manutius, who lived and worked in Venice.
This man was engaged in the publication of the works of ancient (mainly Greek) scientists and philosophers. Before Manucius, Europe wrote texts without any division into semantic parts (not using not only the usual periods or commas, but often not even putting spaces between words). Therefore, in order to make the books published by him more readable, Ald Manucius needed to develop a punctuation system (which is still used in most of the world's languages).
In particular, the semicolon was also developed. The new sign was intended to separate words that are opposite in meaning.
A few centuries later, the semicolon began to be used throughout Europe, but with the meaning we are used to - the separation of sentences with a complex composition. The exception here was the Greek (respectively, and Church Slavonic) language, in which the semicolon is still used as a question mark.
Semicolon in Russia
In ancient times, in the Russian language, any punctuation marks, as in Europe, were not used. The letters were written in one piece, but the Russians sometimes used different semantic symbols above or below the letters in order to separate words. An irresistible need for punctuation marks that perform separate functions arose with the development of typography.
Punctuation in Ancient Rus at the initial stage of its development was oriented towards Greek.
The first punctuation mark was a period. She appeared in the 1480s. Actually, all the other signs came from her years later, which in particular was reflected in their names.
In 1515, on the instructions of Grand Duke Vasily III, Maxim the Greek was sent to Moscow to translate Greek books (in the world he was called Mikhail Trivolis). This man was indeed a Greek, he did not understand Russian, but with the help of Russian translators and scribes, the Psalter was first translated into Russian. It was then that the semicolon appeared (Maxim the Greek called it "subdiastoli"). But then the Greek recommended using this sign to indicate a question (the question mark we are used to in writing did not yet exist).
A little later, after the question mark was invented, the semicolon began to be used in our usual meaning, as a separating character in large sentences with a complex composition, or as a separator in enumerated sentences, parts of which contain commas. In the 20th century, the semicolon also began to be used as a separator between phrases in numbered lists.
