This is an accepted version of this page
89-406: The comma , is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight, but inclined from the vertical, others give it the appearance of a miniature filled-in figure 9 placed on the baseline . In many typefaces it is the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark ’ . The comma
178-463: A punctus was placed at one of several heights to denote rhetorical divisions in speech: In addition, the Greeks used the paragraphos (or gamma ) to mark the beginning of sentences, marginal diples to mark quotations, and a koronis to indicate the end of major sections. During the 1st century BC, Romans also made occasional use of symbols to indicate pauses, but by the 4th century AD
267-487: A dependent clause from the independent clause if the dependent clause comes first: After I fed the cat, I brushed my clothes. (Compare this with I brushed my clothes after I fed the cat. ) A relative clause takes commas if it is non- restrictive , as in I cut down all the trees, which were over six feet tall. (Without the comma, this would mean that only the trees more than six feet tall were cut down.) Some style guides prescribe that two independent clauses joined by
356-423: A grapheme (writing) and /x/ denotes a phoneme (sound). 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
445-460: A tensor . In representing large numbers, from the right side to the left, English texts usually use commas to separate each group of three digits in front of the decimal. This is almost always done for numbers of six or more digits, and often for four or five digits but not in front of the number itself. However, in much of Europe, Southern Africa and Latin America, periods or spaces are used instead;
534-487: A boarding school in Germany before enrolling at Rugby School in 1871. He concentrated on Latin and Greek , winning a school prize for his translation into Greek verse of part of Percy Bysshe Shelley 's play Prometheus Unbound . He also took part in drama and debating and in his final year served as head of his house, School House. He was greatly inspired by one of his classics teachers, Robert Whitelaw, with whom he kept up
623-488: A comma and no conjunction (as in "It is nearly half past five, we cannot reach town before dark." ) is known as a comma splice and is sometimes considered an error in English; in most cases a semicolon should be used instead. A comma splice should not be confused, though, with the literary device called asyndeton , in which coordinating conjunctions are purposely omitted for a specific stylistic effect. A much debated comma
712-519: A comma before quotations unless one would occur anyway. Thus, they would write Mr. Kershner says "You should know how to use a comma." When a date is written as a month followed by a day followed by a year, a comma separates the day from the year: December 19, 1941. This style is common in American English. The comma is used to avoid confusing consecutive numbers: December 19 1941. Most style manuals, including The Chicago Manual of Style and
801-406: A comma before the final "and", but sometimes it can help the reader ( he ate cereal, kippers, bacon, eggs, toast and marmalade, and tea ). The Chicago Manual of Style and other academic writing guides require the serial comma: all lists must have a comma before the "and" prefacing the last item in a series ( see Differences between American and British usage below ). If the individual items of
890-413: A comma. Using commas to offset certain adverbs is optional, including then , so , yet , instead , and too (meaning also ). Commas are often used to enclose parenthetical words and phrases within a sentence (i.e., information that is not essential to the meaning of the sentence). Such phrases are both preceded and followed by a comma, unless that would result in a doubling of punctuation marks or
979-401: A cool day" parenthetical: As more phrases are introduced, ambiguity accumulates, but when commas separate each phrase, the phrases clearly become modifiers of just one thing. In the second sentence below, that thing is the walk : A comma is used to separate coordinate adjectives (i.e., adjectives that directly and equally modify the following noun). Adjectives are considered coordinate if
SECTION 10
#17328526580441068-475: A coordinating conjunction ( for , and , nor , but , or , yet , so ) must be separated by a comma placed before the conjunction. In the following sentences, where the second clause is independent (because it can stand alone as a sentence), the comma is considered by those guides to be necessary: In the following sentences, where the second half of the sentence is a dependent clause (because it does not contain an explicit subject ), those guides prescribe that
1157-494: A correspondence later in life. In 1877 Fowler began attending Balliol College , Oxford . He did not excel at Oxford as he had at Rugby, earning only second-class honours in both Moderations and Literae Humaniores . Although he participated little in Oxford sport, he did begin a practice that he was to continue for the rest of his life: a daily morning run followed by a swim in the nearest body of water. He left Oxford in 1881, but
1246-431: 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
1335-520: A few punctuation marks, as it was mostly aimed at recording business transactions. Only with the Greek playwrights (such as Euripides and Aristophanes ) did the ends of sentences begin to be marked to help actors know when to make a pause during performances. Punctuation includes space between words and both obsolete and modern signs. By the 19th century, the punctuation marks were used hierarchically, according to their weight. Six marks, proposed in 1966 by
1424-419: A list are long, complex, affixed with description, or themselves contain commas, semicolons may be preferred as separators, and the list may be introduced with a colon . In news headlines , a comma might replace the word "and", even if there are only two items, in order to save space, as in this headline from Reuters: Commas are often used to separate clauses . In English, a comma is often used to separate
1513-599: A master there. Samuel, the troublesome youngest brother, was sent to Sedbergh, probably to be taken care of by Henry and Arthur, but he stayed only a year before leaving the school, and of him nothing further is known. Henry Fowler made several lifelong friends at Sedbergh, who often accompanied him on holiday to the Alps. These included Ralph St John Ainslie, a music teacher and caricaturist; E. P. Lemarchand, whose sister eventually married Arthur Fowler; Bernard Tower, who went on to become headmaster at Lancing ; and George Coulton , who
1602-463: A pause. The modern comma was first used by Aldus Manutius . In general, the comma shows that the words immediately before the comma are less closely or exclusively linked grammatically to those immediately after the comma than they might be otherwise. The comma performs a number of functions in English writing. It is used in generally similar ways in other languages, particularly European ones, although
1691-671: A second edition was finally commissioned in the 1960s. On the death of its original editor in 1922, Fowler helped complete the first edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary , under the editorship of C.T. Onions . In 1929 Fowler republished Si mihi—! under his own name as If Wishes were Horses , and another volume of old journalistic articles under the title Some Comparative Values. On 26 December 1933, Fowler died at his home, "Sunnyside", Hinton St George, England, aged 75. Currently, The King's English and Modern English Usage remain in print. The latter
1780-534: A sentence, a function for which normal question and exclamation marks can also be used, but which may be considered obsolescent. The patent application entered into the national phase only in Canada. It was advertised as lapsing in Australia on 27 January 1994 and in Canada on 6 November 1995. Other proposed punctuation marks include: Henry Watson Fowler Henry Watson Fowler (10 March 1858 – 26 December 1933)
1869-400: A single character (-), sometimes repeated to represent a long dash. The spaces of different widths available to professional typesetters were generally replaced by a single full-character width space, with typefaces monospaced . In some cases a typewriter keyboard did not include an exclamation point (!), which could otherwise be constructed by the overstrike of an apostrophe and a period;
SECTION 20
#17328526580441958-415: A small inheritance from his father. In his first published article, "Books We Think We Have Read" (1900), he first discusses the habit among Englishmen of pretending a familiarity with certain books—such as the works of Shakespeare or books considered "juvenile"—then proceeds to recommend that the savouring of these books should be "no tossing off of ardent spirits, but the connoisseur's deliberate rolling in
2047-409: A thin space. In Canadian French , this is only the case for ⟨:⟩ . In Greek , the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point ⟨·⟩ , known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Georgian , three dots ⟨ ჻ ⟩ were formerly used as a sentence or paragraph divider. It
2136-463: A word, or a group of words, has been omitted, as in The cat was white; the dog, brown. (Here the comma replaces was .) Commas are placed before, after, or around a noun or pronoun used independently in speaking to some person, place, or thing: In his 1785 essay An Essay on Punctuation , Joseph Robertson advocated a comma between the subject and predicate of long sentences for clarity; however, this usage
2225-472: Is a modern innovation; pre-modern Arabic did not use punctuation. Hebrew , which is also written from right to left, uses the same characters as in English, ⟨,⟩ and ⟨?⟩ . Originally, Sanskrit had no punctuation. In the 17th century, Sanskrit and Marathi , both written using Devanagari , started using the vertical bar ⟨ । ⟩ to end a line of prose and double vertical bars ⟨॥⟩ in verse. Punctuation
2314-403: Is called the Oxford comma because of its long history of use by Oxford University Press. According to New Hart's Rules , "house style will dictate" whether to use the serial comma. "The general rule is that one style or the other should be used consistently." No association with region or dialect is suggested, other than that its use has been strongly advocated by Oxford University Press. Its use
2403-549: Is preferred by Fowler 's Modern English Usage . It is recommended by the United States Government Printing Office , Harvard University Press , and the classic Elements of Style of Strunk and White . Use of a comma may prevent ambiguity: The serial comma does not eliminate all confusion. Consider the following sentence: As a rule of thumb , The Guardian Style Guide suggests that straightforward lists ( he ate ham, eggs and chips ) do not need
2492-555: Is regarded as an error in modern times. Punctuation Punctuation marks are marks indicating how a piece of written text should be read (silently or aloud) and, consequently, understood. The oldest known examples of punctuation marks were found in the Mesha Stele from the 9th century BC, consisting of points between the words and horizontal strokes between sections. The alphabet -based writing began with no spaces, no capitalization , no vowels (see abjad ), and with only
2581-406: Is represented by a colon, and vice versa; the exclamation mark is represented by a diagonal similar to a tilde ⟨~⟩ , while the question mark ⟨՞⟩ resembles an unclosed circle placed after the last vowel of the word. Arabic , Urdu , and Persian —written from right to left—use a reversed question mark: ⟨؟⟩ , and a reversed comma: ⟨،⟩ . This
2670-500: Is still sometimes used in calligraphy. Spanish and Asturian (both of them Romance languages used in Spain ) use an inverted question mark ⟨ ¿ ⟩ at the beginning of a question and the normal question mark at the end, as well as an inverted exclamation mark ⟨ ¡ ⟩ at the beginning of an exclamation and the normal exclamation mark at the end. Armenian uses several punctuation marks of its own. The full stop
2759-649: Is the one in the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution , which says "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." but ratified by several states as "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." which has caused much debate on its interpretation. Commas are always used to set off certain adverbs at
Comma - Misplaced Pages Continue
2848-471: 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 ( kómma ), 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
2937-600: The punctus , a comma-shaped mark, and a 7-shaped mark ( comma positura ), often used in combination. The same marks could be used in the margin to mark off quotations. In the late 8th century a different system emerged in France under the Carolingian dynasty . Originally indicating how the voice should be modulated when chanting the liturgy , the positurae migrated into any text meant to be read aloud, and then to all manuscripts. Positurae first reached England in
3026-529: The AP Stylebook , also recommend that the year be treated as a parenthetical, requiring a second comma after it: "Feb. 14, 1987, was the target date." If just the month and year are given, no commas are used: "Her daughter may return in June 2009 for the reunion." When the day precedes the month, the month name separates the numeric day and year, so commas are not necessary to separate them: "The Raid on Alexandria
3115-494: The Bible started to be produced. These were designed to be read aloud, so the copyists began to introduce a range of marks to aid the reader, including indentation , various punctuation marks ( diple , paragraphos , simplex ductus ), and an early version of initial capitals ( litterae notabiliores ). Jerome and his colleagues, who made a translation of the Bible into Latin ,
3204-627: The Indian subcontinent , ⟨ :- ⟩ is sometimes used in place of colon or after a subheading. Its origin is unclear, but could be a remnant of the British Raj . Another punctuation common in the Indian Subcontinent for writing monetary amounts is the use of ⟨/-⟩ or ⟨/=⟩ after the number. For example, Rs. 20/- or Rs. 20/= implies 20 whole rupees. Thai , Khmer , Lao and Burmese did not use punctuation until
3293-622: The Vulgate ( c. AD 400 ), employed a layout system based on established practices for teaching the speeches of Demosthenes and Cicero . Under his layout per cola et commata every sense-unit was indented and given its own line. This layout was solely used for biblical manuscripts during the 5th–9th centuries but was abandoned in favor of punctuation. In the 7th–8th centuries Irish and Anglo-Saxon scribes, whose native languages were not derived from Latin , added more visual cues to render texts more intelligible. Irish scribes introduced
3382-595: The at sign (@) has gone from an obscure character mostly used by sellers of bulk commodities (10 pounds @$ 2.00 per pound), to a very common character in common use for both technical routing and an abbreviation for "at". The tilde (~), in moveable type only used in combination with vowels, for mechanical reasons ended up as a separate key on mechanical typewriters , and like @ it has been put to completely new uses. There are two major styles of punctuation in English: British or American. These two styles differ mainly in
3471-411: 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 ș . In spoken language , a common rule of thumb is that the function of a comma is generally performed by a pause . In this article, ⟨x⟩ denotes
3560-557: The semicolon , making occasional use of parentheses , and creating the modern comma by lowering the virgule. By 1566, Aldus Manutius the Younger was able to state that the main object of punctuation was the clarification of syntax . By the 19th century, punctuation in the Western world had evolved "to classify the marks hierarchically, in terms of weight". Cecil Hartley's poem identifies their relative values: The stop point out, with truth,
3649-537: The 12th century scribes also began entering diples (sometimes double) within the column of text. The amount of printed material and its readership began to increase after the invention of moveable type in Europe in the 1450s. Martin Luther 's German Bible translation was one of the first mass printed works, he used only virgule , full stop and less than one percent question marks as punctuation. The focus of punctuation still
Comma - Misplaced Pages Continue
3738-592: The 1960s, it failed to achieve widespread use. Nevertheless, it and its inverted form were given code points in Unicode: U+203D ‽ INTERROBANG , U+2E18 ⸘ INVERTED INTERROBANG . The six additional punctuation marks proposed in 1966 by the French author Hervé Bazin in his book Plumons l'Oiseau ("Let's pluck the bird", 1966) could be seen as predecessors of emoticons and emojis . These were: An international patent application
3827-555: The French author Hervé Bazin , could be seen as predecessors of emoticons and emojis . In rare cases, the meaning of a text can be changed substantially by using different punctuation, such as in "woman, without her man, is nothing" (emphasizing the importance of men to women), contrasted with "woman: without her, man is nothing" (emphasizing the importance of women to men). Similar changes in meaning can be achieved in spoken forms of most languages by using elements of speech such as suprasegmentals . The rules of punctuation vary with
3916-451: The Greek théseis —called distinctiones in Latin —prevailed, as reported by Aelius Donatus and Isidore of Seville (7th century). Latin texts were sometimes laid out per capitula , where each sentence was placed on its own line. Diples were used, but by the late period these often degenerated into comma-shaped marks. Punctuation developed dramatically when large numbers of copies of
4005-543: The OED at the same time they were working on Modern English Usage ; work on both began in 1911, with Henry Fowler concentrating on Modern English Usage and Francis on the pocket dictionary. Neither work was complete at the start of World War I . In 1914, Fowler and his younger brother volunteered for service in the British army. To gain acceptance, the 56-year-old Henry lied about his age. Both he and Francis were invalided out of
4094-614: The United States. A majority of American style guides mandate its use, including The Chicago Manual of Style , Strunk and White 's classic The Elements of Style and the U.S. Government Publishing Office 's Style Manual . Conversely, the AP Stylebook for journalistic writing advises against it. The serial comma is also known as the Oxford comma, Harvard comma, or series comma. Although less common in British English, its usage occurs within both American and British English. It
4183-454: The West wrote in scriptio continua , i.e. without punctuation delimiting word boundaries . Around the 5th century BC, the Greeks began using punctuation consisting of vertically arranged dots—usually a dicolon or tricolon—as an aid in the oral delivery of texts. After 200 BC, Greek scribes adopted the théseis system invented by Aristophanes of Byzantium , where a single dot called
4272-400: The adoption of punctuation from the West in the 20th century. Blank spaces are more frequent than full stops or commas. In 1962, American advertising executive Martin K. Speckter proposed the interrobang (‽), a combination of the question mark and exclamation point, to mark rhetorical questions or questions stated in a tone of disbelief. Although the new punctuation mark was widely discussed in
4361-607: The army in 1916 and resumed work on Modern English Usage . In 1918, Francis died aged 47 of tuberculosis , contracted during service with the BEF . After his brother's death, Henry Fowler and his wife moved to Hinton St George in Somerset, where he worked on the Pocket Oxford Dictionary and Modern English Usage , which he dedicated to his brother. A Dictionary of Modern English Usage , published in 1926, considered by many to be
4450-416: The beginning of a sentence, including however , in fact , therefore , nevertheless , moreover , furthermore , and still . If these adverbs appear in the middle of a sentence, they are followed and preceded by a comma. As in the second of the two examples below, if a semicolon separates the two sentences and the second sentence starts with an adverb, this adverb is preceded by a semicolon and followed by
4539-469: The boys for confirmation in the Church of England . This was against Fowler's principles, and when it became clear that no compromise on this matter was possible, he resigned. In the summer of 1899 Fowler moved to a house at 14 Paultons Square, Chelsea , London (where there is now a blue plaque in his honour), and sought work as a freelance writer and journalist, surviving on his meagre writer's earnings and
SECTION 50
#17328526580444628-456: The closing quotation mark regardless. This rule varies for other punctuation marks; for example, American English follows the British English rule when it comes to semicolons, colons, question marks, and exclamation points. The serial comma is used much more often in the United States than in the UK. Other languages of Europe use much the same punctuation as English. The similarity is so strong that
4717-476: The colon, and the full point terminating the sentence. The marks of interrogation and admiration were introduced many years after. The introduction of electrical telegraphy with a limited set of transmission codes and typewriters with a limited set of keys influenced punctuation subtly. For example, curved quotes and apostrophes were all collapsed into two characters (' and "). The hyphen , minus sign , and dashes of various widths have been collapsed into
4806-640: The comma be omitted: However, such guides permit the comma to be omitted if the second independent clause is very short, typically when the second independent clause is an imperative , as in: The above guidance is not universally accepted or applied. Long coordinate clauses , particularly when separated by "but", are often separated by commas: In some languages, such as German and Polish , stricter rules apply on comma use between clauses, with dependent clauses always being set off with commas, and commas being generally proscribed before certain coordinating conjunctions. The joining of two independent sentences with
4895-453: The comma is used as a decimal separator , equivalent to the use in English of the decimal point . In India, the groups are two digits, except for the rightmost group, which is of three digits. In some styles, the comma may not be used for this purpose at all (e.g. in the SI writing style ); a space may be used to separate groups of three digits instead. Commas are used when rewriting names to present
4984-412: The definitive style guide to the English language, "made the name of Fowler a household word in all English-speaking countries". The Times described it as a "fascinating, formidable book". Winston Churchill directed his officials to read it. The success of the book was such that the publishers had to reprint it three times in the first year of publication, and there were twelve further reprints before
5073-580: The few variations may confuse a native English reader. Quotation marks are particularly variable across European languages. For example, in French and Russian , quotes would appear as: « Je suis fatigué. » (In French, the quotation marks are spaced from the enclosed material; in Russian they are not.) In the French of France and Belgium , the marks ⟨:⟩ , ⟨;⟩ , ⟨?⟩ and ⟨!⟩ are preceded by
5162-495: The first form, but soon switching to the sixth form . He was a respected but uninspiring teacher, earning the nickname "Joey Stinker" owing to his propensity for tobacco smoking. Several of the Fowler brothers were reunited at Sedbergh. Charles Fowler taught temporarily at the school during the illness of one of the house masters. Arthur Fowler had transferred from Rugby to Sedbergh for his last eighteen months at school and later became
5251-491: The greater use and finally standardization of punctuation, which showed the relationships of words with each other: where one sentence ends and another begins, for example. The introduction of a standard system of punctuation has also been attributed to the Venetian printers Aldus Manutius and his grandson. They have been credited with popularizing the practice of ending sentences with the colon or full stop (period), inventing
5340-413: The guidance of the reader produced the colon and full point. In process of time, the comma was added, which was then merely a perpendicular line, proportioned to the body of the letter. These three points were the only ones used until the close of the fifteenth century, when Aldo Manuccio gave a better shape to the comma, and added the semicolon; the comma denoting the shortest pause, the semicolon next, then
5429-402: The language, location , register , and time . In online chat and text messages punctuation is used tachygraphically , especially among younger users. Punctuation marks, especially spacing , were not needed in logographic or syllabic (such as Chinese and Mayan script ) texts because disambiguation and emphasis could be communicated by employing a separate written form distinct from
SECTION 60
#17328526580445518-518: The late 10th century, probably during the Benedictine reform movement, but was not adopted until after the Norman conquest . The original positurae were the punctus , punctus elevatus , punctus versus , and punctus interrogativus , but a fifth symbol, the punctus flexus , was added in the 10th century to indicate a pause of a value between the punctus and punctus elevatus . In
5607-485: The late 11th/early 12th century the punctus versus disappeared and was taken over by the simple punctus (now with two distinct values). The late Middle Ages saw the addition of the virgula suspensiva (slash or slash with a midpoint dot) which was often used in conjunction with the punctus for different types of pauses. Direct quotations were marked with marginal diples, as in Antiquity, but from at least
5696-422: The marks hinder optical character recognition . Canada Post has similar guidelines, only making very limited use of hyphens. Similar to the case in natural languages, commas are often used to delineate the boundary between multiple mathematical objects in a list (e.g., ( 3 , 5 , 12 ) {\displaystyle (3,5,12)} ). Commas are also used to indicate the comma derivative of
5785-471: The meaning would be the same if their order were reversed or if and were placed between them. For example: Some writers precede quoted material that is the grammatical object of an active verb of speaking or writing with a comma, as in Mr. Kershner says, "You should know how to use a comma." Quotations that follow and support an assertion are often preceded by a colon rather than a comma. Other writers do not put
5874-406: The mouth of some old vintage". In "Outdoor London", published a year later in the short-lived Anglo-Saxon Review , Fowler describes the sights and sounds of his new home, praising its plants, its Cockney inhabitants, and its magical night scenes. In 1903, he moved to the island of Guernsey , where he worked with his brother Francis George Fowler . Their first joint project was a translation of
5963-502: The original Morse code did not have an exclamation point. These simplifications have been carried forward into digital writing, with teleprinters and the ASCII character set essentially supporting the same characters as typewriters. Treatment of whitespace in HTML discouraged the practice (in English prose) of putting two full spaces after a full stop, since a single or double space would appear
6052-400: The parenthetical is at the start or end of the sentence. The following are examples of types of parenthetical phrases: The parenthesization of phrases may change the connotation, reducing or eliminating ambiguity . In the following example, the thing in the first sentence that is relaxing is the cool day, whereas in the second sentence, it is the walk since the introduction of commas makes "on
6141-412: The practice of word separation . Likewise, insular scribes adopted the distinctiones system while adapting it for minuscule script (so as to be more prominent) by using not differing height but rather a differing number of marks—aligned horizontally (or sometimes triangularly)—to signify a pause's duration: one mark for a minor pause, two for a medium one, and three for a major one. Most common were
6230-489: The punctuation of traditional typesetting, writing forms like text messages tend to use the simplified ASCII style of punctuation, with the addition of new non-text characters like emoji . Informal text speak tends to drop punctuation when not needed, including some ways that would be considered errors in more formal writing. In the computer era, punctuation characters were recycled for use in programming languages and URLs . Due to its use in email and Twitter handles,
6319-538: The rules on comma usage – and their rigidity – vary from language to language. Commas are placed between items in lists, as in They own a cat, a dog, two rabbits, and seven mice. Whether the final conjunction, most frequently and , should be preceded by a comma, called the serial comma , is one of the most disputed linguistic or stylistic questions in English: The serial comma is used much more often, usually routinely, in
6408-411: The same on the screen. (Most style guides now discourage double spaces, and some electronic writing tools, including Misplaced Pages's software, automatically collapse double spaces to single.) The full traditional set of typesetting tools became available with the advent of desktop publishing and more sophisticated word processors . Despite the widespread adoption of character sets like Unicode that support
6497-472: The spoken form of the language. Ancient Chinese classical texts were transmitted without punctuation. However, many Warring States period bamboo texts contain the symbols ⟨└⟩ and ⟨▄⟩ indicating the end of a chapter and full stop , respectively. By the Song dynasty , the addition of punctuation to texts by scholars to aid comprehension became common. During antiquity, most scribes in
6586-438: The surname first, generally in instances of alphabetization by surname: Smith, John . They are also used before many titles that follow a name: John Smith, Ph.D. It can also be used in regnal names followed by their occupation: Louis XIII, king of France and Navarre . Similarly in lists that are presented with an inversion: socks, green: 3 pairs; socks, red: 2 pairs; tie, regimental: 1 . Commas may be used to indicate that
6675-403: The time of pause A sentence doth require at ev'ry clause. At ev'ry comma, stop while one you count; At semicolon, two is the amount; A colon doth require the time of three ; The period four , as learned men agree. The use of punctuation was not standardised until after the invention of printing. According to the 1885 edition of The American Printer , the importance of punctuation
6764-412: The way in which they handle quotation marks, particularly in conjunction with other punctuation marks. In British English, punctuation marks such as full stops and commas are placed inside the quotation mark only if they are part of what is being quoted, and placed outside the closing quotation mark if part of the containing sentence. In American English, however, such punctuation is generally placed inside
6853-718: The works of Lucian of Samosata . The translation, described by The Times as of "remarkable quality", was taken up by the Oxford University Press and published in four volumes in 1905. Their next work was The King's English (1906), a book meant to encourage writers to be stylistically simple and direct and not to misuse words. This book "took the world by storm". Fowler collected some of his journalistic articles into volumes and published them pseudonymously, including More Popular Fallacies (1904) by "Quillet", and Si mihi —! (1907) by "Egomet". In 1908, on his fiftieth birthday, he married Jessie Marian Wills (1862–1930). It
6942-466: Was a Cambridge graduate, clergyman and schoolmaster. At the time of Henry's birth he was teaching mathematics at Tonbridge School , but the family soon moved to nearby Tunbridge Wells . Henry was the eldest child of eight, and his father's early death in 1879 left him to assume a leading role in caring for his younger brothers and sister (Charles, Alexander, [Edward] Seymour, Edith, Arthur, Francis and [Herbert] Samuel). Henry Fowler spent some time at
7031-544: Was an English schoolmaster , lexicographer and commentator on the usage of the English language. He is notable for both A Dictionary of Modern English Usage and his work on the Concise Oxford Dictionary , and was described by The Times as "a lexicographical genius". After an Oxford education, Fowler was a schoolmaster until his middle age and then worked in London as a freelance writer and journalist, but
7120-493: Was an exceptionally happy, but childless, marriage. The Oxford University Press commissioned from the Fowler brothers a single-volume abridgement of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which was published as the Concise Oxford Dictionary in 1911. The Concise Oxford has remained in print ever since, being regularly revised. The next commission for the brothers was a much smaller, pocket-sized abridgement of
7209-695: Was carried out on 19 December 1941." Commas are used to separate parts of geographical references, such as city and state ( Dallas, Texas ) or city and country ( Kampala, Uganda ). Additionally, most style manuals, including The Chicago Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook , recommend that the second element be treated as a parenthetical, requiring a second comma after: "The plane landed in Kampala, Uganda, that evening." The United States Postal Service and Royal Mail recommend leaving out punctuation when writing addresses on actual letters and packages, as
7298-443: Was filed, and published in 1992 under World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) number WO9219458, for two new punctuation marks: the "question comma" and the "exclamation comma". The question comma has a comma instead of the dot at the bottom of a question mark, while the exclamation comma has a comma in place of the point at the bottom of an exclamation mark. These were intended for use as question and exclamation marks within
7387-606: Was not awarded a degree until 1886, because he failed to pass his Divinity examination. Trusting in the judgment of the Balliol College master that he had "a natural aptitude for the profession of Schoolmaster", Fowler took up a temporary teaching position at Fettes College in Edinburgh. After spending two terms there, he moved south again to Yorkshire (present-day Cumbria ) to begin a mastership at Sedbergh School in 1882. There he taught Latin, Greek and English, starting with
7476-523: Was not used in Chinese , Japanese , Korean and Vietnamese Chu Nom writing until the adoption of punctuation from the West in the late 19th and early 20th century. In unpunctuated texts, the grammatical structure of sentences in classical writing is inferred from context. Most punctuation marks in modern Chinese, Japanese, and Korean have similar functions to their English counterparts; however, they often look different and have different customary rules. In
7565-542: Was not very successful. In partnership with his brother Francis , beginning in 1906, he began publishing seminal grammar, style and lexicography books. After his brother's death in 1918, he completed the works on which they had collaborated and edited additional works. Fowler was born on 10 March 1858 in Tonbridge , Kent. His parents, the Rev. Robert Fowler and his wife Caroline, née Watson, were originally from Devon . Robert Fowler
7654-488: Was noted in various sayings by children, such as: Charles the First walked and talked Half an hour after his head was cut off . With a semicolon and a comma added, it reads as follows: Charles the First walked and talked; Half an hour after, his head was cut off. In a 19th-century manual of typography , Thomas MacKellar writes: Shortly after the invention of printing, the necessity of stops or pauses in sentences for
7743-414: Was rhetorical, to aid reading aloud. As explained by writer and editor Lynne Truss , "The rise of printing in the 14th and 15th centuries meant that a standard system of punctuation was urgently required." Printed books, whose letters were uniform, could be read much more rapidly than manuscripts. Rapid reading, or reading aloud, did not allow time to analyze sentence structures. This increased speed led to
7832-421: Was to write the first biography of Henry Fowler. Despite being the son of a clergyman, Fowler had been an atheist for quite some time, though he rarely spoke of his beliefs in public. He had the chance of becoming a housemaster at Sedbergh on three occasions. The third offer was accompanied by a long discussion with the headmaster, Henry Hart, about the religious requirements for the post, which included preparing
7921-487: Was updated by Sir Ernest Gowers for the second edition (1965) and largely rewritten by Robert Burchfield for the third (1996). A Pocket edition ( ISBN 0-19-860947-7 ) edited by Robert Allen, based on Burchfield's edition, is available online to subscribers of the Oxford Reference On-line Premium collection. A biography of Fowler was published in 2001 called The Warden of English. The author
#43956