Commas, semicolons, and question marks are so commonplace it seems as if they were always there but that’s not the case. How and when they were generated? Were they different than they are today?
The apostrophe (’), widely used starting in the 16th century, came into use in English for purposes of elision (or contractions such as I’m for I am) and to fill in where a grapheme or letter no longer reflected the actual pronunciation (e.g. loved became lov’d). The apostrophe was first used this way by Geoffrey Tory in French in 1529. It was used at the junction of two vowel sounds (e.g. la heure became l’heure). Taking this feature from the French language, English speakers used this feature so they could contract words and leave out unpronounced letters without losing any meaning. It could be surmised that the printing press, an industry that charged per letter, encouraged writers to use the apostrophe to save money. A standardised way of using the apostrophe wasn’t finalised until the mid-1800s, and which is still in use today.
I know this about the exclamation mark; The exclamation mark was first introduced into English printing in the 15th century to show emphasis and was called the "sign of admiration or exclamation" or the "note of admiration" until the mid-17th century; “admiration” referred to that word’s Latin-language sense, of wonderment.
