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Concept
Comma
Summary
The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline of the text. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight, but inclined from the vertical. Other fonts give it the appearance of a miniature filled-in figure on the baseline.
The comma is used in many contexts and languages, mainly to separate parts of a sentence such as clauses, and items in lists mainly when there are three or more items listed. The word comma comes from the Greek κόμμα (), which originally meant a cut-off piece, specifically in grammar, a short clause.
A comma-shaped mark is used as a diacritic in several writing systems and is considered distinct from the cedilla. In Byzantine and modern copies of Ancient Greek, the "rough" and "smooth breathings" (ἁ, ἀ) appear above the letter. In Latvian, Romanian, and Livonian, the comma diacritic appears below the letter, as in .
In spoken language, a common rule of thumb is that the function of a comma is generally performed by a pause.
For the notation and /x/ used in this article, see grapheme and phoneme, respectively.
Punctuation#Western Antiquity
The development of punctuation is much more recent than the alphabet.
In the 3rd century BC, Aristophanes of Byzantium invented a system of single dots (théseis) at varying levels, which separated verses and indicated the amount of breath needed to complete each fragment of the text when reading aloud. The different lengths were signified by a dot at the bottom, middle, or top of the line. For a short passage, a komma in the form of a dot was placed mid-level. This is the origin of the concept of a comma, although the name came to be used for the mark itself instead of the clause it separated.
The mark used today is descended from a , a diagonal slash known as virgula suspensiva, used from the 13th to 17th centuries to represent a pause.
Official source
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