I have not been following the thread from the beginning, but it seems to me that a key word in this sentence:
"I am well aware that they did not have our modern sentence structure nor did they necessarily start with a capital and end with a period,"
is OUR.
Apparently other modern languages function quite well without full stops and capitalization.

An interesting question might be, "why does OUR modern English places such an emphasis on clear and unambiguous written form?" 


Scott <[log in to unmask]> wrote: Having read facsimiles and a few original medieval documents, I am well
aware that they did not have our modern sentence structure nor did they
necessarily start with a capital and end with a period.  The primary
point is that they did have complete thoughts and wrote them.  That we
may choose to punctuate them by joining two independent clauses with a 
colon or semicolon in lieu of having two short sentences is irrelevant 
to the concept that medieval writers did not, as a general rule, write 
in sentences.

I must be missing some critical point.  All I read are allegations.
Unless someone gets on line and starts citing a number of medieval 
MSS that do not have complete sentences) preferably MSS in Latin, 
German, or Romance languages (Koine is too argumentative), I tend to
consider such allegations specious.

Scott
I'm from MS not MO, but show me anyway.

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