Aldus

This celebrated printer, otherwise known as Aldus Manutius, was a native of Rome. He erected a printing-office at Venice in 1496, and introduced a neater cut of Roman types, and it is to him, or rather to the engraver, Francesto of Bologna, that we owe the types called by the Italians Corsivi, and known to us as Italics, which Aldus used for the first time in 1501. (See “Annales de l’Imprimerie des Aldes,” par A. Renouard. Paris, 1834.)

Amongst other improvements in printing, this eminent man corrected and enlarged the punctuation, by giving a better shape to the comma, adding the semi-colon, and assigning to the points a more proper place.