Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856):

POINTS, construction. Marks in writing and in print, to denote the stops
that ought to be made in reading, and to point out the sense.
     2. Points are not usually put in legislative acts or in deeds: Eunom.
Dial. 2, Sec. 33, p. 239; yet, in construing them, the courts must read them
with such stops as will give effect to the whole. 4 T. R. 65.
     3. The points are the comma, the semi-colon, the colon, the full point,
the point of interrogation and exclamation. Barr. on the Stat. 294, note;
vide Punctuation.