Comma

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma 

,
Comma
U+002C , COMMA (,)
、 ، ◌̦ Japanese comma Arabic comma combining comma below

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 9 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 (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 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.

For the notation ⟨x⟩ and /x/ used in this article, see grapheme and phoneme, respectively.

History

Main article: 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. The modern comma was first used by Aldus Manutius.

Uses in English

Look up comma in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

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 the rules on comma usage – and their rigidity – vary from language to language.

Serial comma

Further information: Serial comma

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.

• They served apples, peaches, and bananas. (serial comma used)
• We cleaned up cores, pits and skins. (serial comma omitted)

The serial comma is used much more often, usually routinely, in 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 Printing Office 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 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 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 sentence I spoke to the boys, Sam and Tom could mean either I spoke to the boys and Sam and Tom (I spoke to more than three people) or I spoke to the boys, who are Sam and Tom (I spoke to two people);
• I spoke to the boys, Sam, and Tom – must be the boys and Sam and Tom (I spoke to more than three people).

The serial comma does not eliminate all confusion. Consider the following sentence:

• I thank my mother, Anne Smith, and Thomas. This could mean either my mother and Anne Smith and Thomas (three people) or my mother, who is Anne Smith; and Thomas (two people). This sentence might be recast as "my mother (Anne Smith) and Thomas" for clarity.
• I thank my mother, Anne Smith and Thomas. Because the comma after "mother" is conventionally used to prepare the reader for an apposite phrase – that is, a renaming of or further information about a noun – this construction suggests that my mother's name is "Anne Smith and Thomas". Compare "I thank my friend, Smith and Wesson", in which the ambiguity is obvious to those who recognise Smith and Wesson as a business name.

As a rule of thumb, The Guardian Style Guide suggests that straightforward lists (he ate ham, eggs and chips) do not need 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 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:

• Trump, Macron engage in a little handshake diplomacy.

Separation of clauses

Commas are often used to separate clauses. In English, a comma is used to separate 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 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:

• Mary walked to the party, but she was unable to walk home.
• Designer clothes are silly, and I can't afford them anyway.
• Don't push that button, or twelve tons of high explosives will go off right under our feet!

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 the comma be omitted:

• Mary walked to the party but was unable to walk home.
• I think designer clothes are silly and can't afford them anyway.

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:

• Sit down and shut up.

The above guidance is not universally accepted or applied. Long coordinate clauses are nonetheless usually separated by commas:

• She had very little to live on, but she would never have dreamed of taking what was not hers.

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 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 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.

Certain adverbs

Commas are always used to set off certain adverbs at the beginning of a sentence, including however, in fact, therefore, nevertheless, moreover, furthermore, and still.

• Therefore, a comma would be appropriate in this sentence.
• Nevertheless, I will not use one.

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 a comma.

• In this sentence, furthermore, commas would also be called for.
• This sentence is a bit different; however, a comma is necessary as well.

Using commas to offset certain adverbs is optional, including then, so, yet, instead, and too (meaning also).

• So, that's it for this rule. or
• So that's it for this rule.
• A comma would be appropriate in this sentence, too. or
• A comma would be appropriate in this sentence too.

Parenthetical phrases

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 the parenthetical is at the start or end of the sentence. The following are examples of types of parenthetical phrases:

• Introductory phrase: Once upon a time, my father ate a muffin.
• Interjection: My father ate the muffin, gosh darn it!
• Aside: My father, if you don't mind me telling you this, ate the muffin.
• Appositive: My father, a jaded and bitter man, ate the muffin.
• Absolute phrase: My father, his eyes flashing with rage, ate the muffin.
• Free modifier: My father, chewing with unbridled fury, ate the muffin.
• Resumptive modifier: My father ate the muffin, a muffin which no man had yet chewed.
• Summative modifier: My father ate the muffin, a feat which no man had attempted.

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 a cool day" parenthetical:

They took a walk on a cool day that was relaxing.

They took a walk, on a cool day, that was relaxing.

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:

They took a walk in the park on a cool day that was relaxing.

They took a walk, in the park, on a cool day, that was relaxing.

Between adjectives

A comma is used to separate coordinate adjectives (i.e., adjectives that directly and equally modify the following noun). Adjectives are considered coordinate if the meaning would be the same if their order were reversed or if and were placed between them. For example:

• The dull, incessant droning but the cute little cottage.
• The devious lazy red frog suggests there are lazy red frogs (one of which is devious), while the devious, lazy red frog does not carry this connotation.

Before quotations

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 a comma before quotations unless one would occur anyway. Thus they would write Mr. Kershner says "You should know how to use a comma."

In dates

Month day, year

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 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 month and year are given, no commas are used: "Her daughter April may return in June 2009 for the reunion."

Day month year

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 was carried out on 19 December 1941."

In geographical names

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 the marks hinder optical character recognition. Canada Post has similar guidelines, only making very limited use of hyphens.

In mathematics

Similar to the case in natural languages, commas are often used to delineate the boundary between multiple mathematical objects in a list (e.g., ${\displaystyle (3,5,12)}$). Commas are also used to indicate the comma derivative of a tensor.

In numbers

Main article: Decimal separator

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; 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.

In names

Commas are used when rewriting names to present 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.

Similarly in lists that are presented with an inversion: ...; socks, green: 3 pairs; socks, red: 2 pairs; tie, regimental: 1.

Ellipsis

Commas may be used to indicate that a word, or a group of words, has been omitted, as in The cat was white; the dog, brown. (Here the comma replaces was.)

Vocative

Commas are placed before, after, or around a noun or pronoun used independently in speaking to some person, place, or thing:

• I hope, John, that you will read this.

Between the subject and predicate

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 is regarded as an error in modern times.

• The good taste of the present age, has not allowed us to neglect the cultivation of the English language.
• Whoever is capable of forgetting a benefit, is an enemy to society.

Differences between American and British usage in placement of commas and quotation marks

See also: Quotation marks in English § Order of punctuation

The comma and the quotation mark can be paired in several ways.

In Great Britain and many other parts of the world, punctuation is usually placed within quotation marks only if it is part of what is being quoted or referred to:

• My mother gave me the nickname "Bobby Bobby Bob Bob Boy", which really made me angry.

In American English, the comma was commonly included inside a quotation mark:

• My mother gave me the nickname "Bobby Bobby Bob Bob Boy," which really made me angry.

However, this practice has fallen out of use in favor of the British form.

During the Second World War, the British carried the comma over into abbreviations. Specifically, "Special Operations, Executive" was written "S.O.,E.". Nowadays, even the full stops are frequently discarded.

Languages other than English

Western European languages

Western European languages like German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese use the same comma as English, with similar spacing, though usage may be somewhat different. For instance, in Standard German, subordinate clauses are always preceded by commas.

Comma variants

The basic comma is defined in Unicode as U+002C , COMMA (,), and many variants by typography or language are also defined.

Character	Unicode point	Unicode name	Notes
,	U+002C	COMMA	Prose in European languages Decimal separator in Continental Europe, Brazil, and most other Latin American countries
ʻ	U+02BB	MODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA	Used as ʻokina in Hawaiian
،	U+060C	ARABIC COMMA	Used in all languages using Arabic alphabet Also used in other languages, including Syriac and Thaana
⸲	U+2E32	TURNED COMMA	Palaeotype transliteration symbol – indicates nasalization
⸴	U+2E34	RAISED COMMA
⹁	U+2E41	REVERSED COMMA	Used in Sindhi, among other languages
⹉	U+2E49	DOUBLE STACKED COMMA	Used in the Eastern Orthodox liturgical book Typikon
、	U+3001	IDEOGRAPHIC COMMA	Used in Chinese and Japanese writing systems (see § Languages other than Western European, below)
︐	U+FE10	PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL COMMA	Used in vertical writing
︑	U+FE11	PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL IDEOGRAPHIC COMMA	Used in vertical writing
﹐	U+FE50	SMALL COMMA
﹑	U+FE51	SMALL IDEOGRAPHIC COMMA
，	U+FF0C	FULLWIDTH COMMA
､	U+FF64	HALFWIDTH IDEOGRAPHIC COMMA

Some languages use a completely different sort of character for the purpose of the comma.

Character	Unicode point	Unicode name	Notes
·	U+00B7	MIDDLE DOT	Used as a comma in Georgian
∘	U+2218	RING OPERATOR	Used as a comma in Malayalam
՝	U+055D	ARMENIAN COMMA
߸	U+07F8	NKO COMMA
፣	U+1363	ETHIOPIC COMMA
᠂	U+1802	MONGOLIAN COMMA
᠈	U+1808	MONGOLIAN MANCHU COMMA
⹌	U+2E4C	MEDIEVAL COMMA
꓾	U+A4FE	LISU PUNCTUATION COMMA
꘍	U+A60D	VAI COMMA
꛵	U+A6F5	BAMUM COMMA
𑑍	U+1144D	NEWA COMMA
𑑚	U+1145A	NEWA DOUBLE COMMA
𖺗	U+16E97	MEDEFAIDRIN COMMA
𝪇	U+1DA87	SIGNWRITING COMMA

There are also a number of comma-like diacritics with "COMMA" in their Unicode names that are not intended for use as punctuation. A comma-like low quotation mark is also available (shown below; corresponding sets of raised single quotation marks and double-quotation marks are not shown).

Character	Unicode point	Unicode name	Notes
ʽ	U+02BD	MODIFIER LETTER REVERSED COMMA	Indicates weak aspiration
‍̒	U+0312	COMBINING TURNED COMMA ABOVE	Latvian diacritic cedilla above
‍̓	U+0313	COMBINING COMMA ABOVE	Greek psili, smooth breathing mark
‍̔	U+0314	COMBINING REVERSED COMMA ABOVE	Greek dasia, rough breathing mark
‍̕	U+0315	COMBINING COMMA ABOVE RIGHT
‍̦	U+0326	COMBINING COMMA BELOW	Diacritical mark in Romanian, Latvian, Livonian
‚	U+201A	SINGLE LOW-9 QUOTATION MARK	Opening single quotation mark in some languages

There are various other Unicode characters that include commas or comma-like figures with other characters or marks, that are not shown in these tables.

Languages other than Western European

Modern Greek uses the same Unicode comma for its kómma (κόμμα) and it is officially romanized as a Latin comma, but it has additional roles owing to its conflation with the former hypodiastole, a curved interpunct used to disambiguate certain homonyms. The comma therefore functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι (ó,ti, "whatever") from ότι (óti, "that").

The enumeration or ideographic comma — U+3001 、 IDEOGRAPHIC COMMA — is used in Chinese, Japanese punctuation, and somewhat in Korean punctuation. In the People's Republic of China and in North/South Korea, this comma (t 頓號, s 顿号, p dùnhào) is usually used only to separate items in lists, while in Japan it is the more common form of comma (読点, r tōten, lit. "clause mark"). In documents that mix Japanese and Latin scripts, the full-width comma (U+FF0C ， FULLWIDTH COMMA) is used; this is the standard form of comma (t 逗號, s 逗号, p dòuhào) in China. Since East Asian typography permits commas to join clauses dealing with certain topics or lines of thought, commas may separate subjects and predicates and constructions that would be considered a "comma splice" in English are acceptable and commonly encountered.

Korean punctuation uses both commas and interpuncts for lists.

In Unicode 5.2.0 "numbers with commas" (U+1F101 🄁 through U+1F10A 🄊 ) were added to the Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement block for compatibility with the ARIB STD B24 character set.

The comma in the Arabic script (used by Arabic, Urdu, and Persian, etc.) is inverted, upside-down: ⟨،⟩ (U+060C ، ARABIC COMMA), in order to distinguish it from the Arabic diacritic ḍammah ⟨ُ⟩, representing the vowel /u/, which is similarly comma-shaped. In Arabic texts, the Western-styled comma (٫) is used as a decimal point.

Reversed comma (U+2E41 ⹁ REVERSED COMMA) is used in Sindhi when written in Arabic script. It is different from the standard Arabic comma.

Hebrew script is also written from right to left. However, Hebrew punctuation includes only a regular comma (,).

Dravidian languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam also use the punctuation mark in similar usage to that of European languages with similar spacing.

Computing

In the common character encoding systems Unicode and ASCII, character 44 (0x2C) corresponds to the comma symbol. The HTML numeric character reference is ,.

In many computer languages commas are used as a field delimiter to separate arguments to a function, to separate elements in a list, and to perform data designation on multiple variables at once.

In the C programming language the comma symbol is an operator which evaluates its first argument (which may have side-effects) and then returns the value of its evaluated second argument. This is useful in for statements and macros.

In Smalltalk and APL, the comma operator is used to concatenate collections, including strings. In APL, it is also used monadically to rearrange the items of an array into a list.

In Prolog, the comma is used to denote Logical Conjunction ("and").

The comma-separated values (CSV) format is very commonly used in exchanging text data between database and spreadsheet formats.

Diacritical usage

◌̦
Combining comma below
U+0326 ◌̦ COMBINING COMMA BELOW

Main articles: D-comma, S-comma, and T-comma

The comma is used as a diacritic mark in Romanian under ⟨s⟩ (⟨Ș⟩, ⟨ș⟩), and under ⟨t⟩ (⟨Ț⟩, ⟨ț⟩). A cedilla is occasionally used instead of it, but this is technically incorrect. The symbol ⟨d̦⟩ ('d with comma below') was used as part of the Romanian transitional alphabet (19th century) to indicate the sounds denoted by the Latin letter ⟨z⟩ or letters ⟨dz⟩, where derived from a Cyrillic ѕ (⟨ѕ⟩, /dz/). The comma and the cedilla are both derivative of ⟨ʒ⟩ (a small cursive ⟨z⟩) placed below the letter. From this standpoint alone, ⟨ș⟩, ⟨ț⟩, and ⟨d̦⟩ could potentially be regarded as stand-ins for /sz/, /tz/, and /dz/ respectively.

In Latvian, the comma is used on the letters ⟨ģ⟩, ⟨ķ⟩, ⟨ļ⟩, ⟨ņ⟩, and historically also ⟨ŗ⟩, to indicate palatalization. Because the lowercase letter ⟨g⟩ has a descender, the comma is rotated 180° and placed over the letter. Although their Adobe glyph names are 'letter with comma', their names in the Unicode Standard are 'letter with a cedilla'. They were introduced to the Unicode standard before 1992 and, per Unicode Consortium policy, their names cannot be altered.

In Livonian, whose alphabet is based on a mixture of Latvian and Estonian alphabets, the comma is used on the letters ⟨ḑ⟩, ⟨ļ⟩, ⟨ņ⟩, ⟨ŗ⟩, ⟨ț⟩ to indicate palatalization in the same fashion as Latvian, except that Livonian uses ⟨ḑ⟩ and ⟨ț⟩ to represent the same palatal plosive phonemes which Latvian writes as ⟨ģ⟩ and ⟨ķ⟩ respectively.

In Czech and Slovak, the diacritic in the characters ⟨ď⟩, ⟨ť⟩, and ⟨ľ⟩ resembles a superscript comma, but it is used instead of a caron because the letter has an ascender. Other ascender letters with carons, such as letters ⟨ȟ⟩ (used in Finnish Romani and Lakota) and ⟨ǩ⟩ (used in Skolt Sami), did not modify their carons to superscript commas.

In 16th-century Guatemala, the archaic letter cuatrillo with a comma (⟨Ꜯ⟩ and ⟨ꜯ⟩) was used to write Mayan languages.

Semicolon

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semicolon 

;
Semicolon
U+003B ; SEMICOLON (;)
؛ ፤ ꛶ Arabic semi colon Ethiopic semicolon Bamum semicolon

The semicolon or semi-colon ; is a symbol commonly used as orthographic punctuation. In the English language, a semicolon is most commonly used to link (in a single sentence) two independent clauses that are closely related in thought. When a semicolon joins two or more ideas in one sentence, those ideas are then given equal rank. Semicolons can also be used in place of commas to separate the items in a list, particularly when the elements of that list contain commas.

The semicolon is one of the least understood of the standard marks, and so it is not as frequently used by many English speakers.

In the QWERTY keyboard layout, the semicolon resides in the unshifted homerow beneath the little finger of the right hand and has become widely used in programming languages as a statement separator or terminator.

History

De Ætna. 1496 print by Aldine Press.

In 1496, the semicolon ; is attested in Pietro Bembo's book De Aetna [it] printed by Aldo Manuzio. The punctuation also appears in later writings of Bembo. Moreover, it is used in 1507 by Bartolomeo Sanvito, who was close to Manuzio's circle.

In 1561, Manuzio's grandson, also called Aldo Manuzio, explains the semicolon's use with several examples in Orthographiae ratio. In particular, Manuzio motivates the need for punctuation (interpungō) to divide (distinguō) sentences, and thereby make them understandable. The comma, semicolon, colon, and period are seen as steps, ascending from low to high; the semicolon thereby being an intermediate value between the comma , and colon :. Here are four examples used in the book to illustrate this:

Publica, privata; sacra, profana; tua, aliena.
Public, private; sacred, profane; yours, another's.

Ratio docet, si adversa fortuna sit, nimium dolendum non esse; si secunda, moderate laetandum.
Reason teaches, if fortune is adverse, not to complain too much; if favorable, to rejoice in moderation.

Tu, quid divitiae valeant, libenter spectas; quid virtus, non item.
You, what riches are worth, gladly consider; what virtue (is worth), not so much.

Etsi ea perturbatio est omnium rerum, ut suae quemque fortunae maxime paeniteat; nemoque sit, quin ubivis, quam ibi, ubi est, esse malit: tamen mihi dubium non est, quin hoc tempore bono viro, Romae esse, miserrimum sit.
Although it is a universal confusion of affairs(,) such that everyone regrets their own fate above all others; and there is no one, who would not rather anywhere else in the world, than there, where he is, prefer to be: yet I have no doubt, at the present time for an honest man, to be in Rome, is the worst form of misery.

Around 1580, Henry Denham starts using the semicolon "with propriety" for English texts and more widespread usage picks up in the next decades.

Around 1640, in Ben Jonson's book The English Grammar, the character ; is described as "somewhat a longer breath" compared to the comma. The aim of the breathing, according to Jonson, is to aid understanding.

In 1644, in Richard Hodges' The English Primrose, it is written:

At a comma, stop a little; [...] At a semi-colon, somewhat more; [...] At a colon, a little more than the former; [...] At a period, make a full stop; [...]

In 1762, in Robert Lowth's A Short Introduction to English Grammar, a parallel is drawn between punctuation marks and rest in music:

The Period is a pause in quantity or duration double of the Colon; the Colon is double of the Semicolon; and the Semicolon is double of the Comma. So that they are in the same proportion to one another as the Sembrief, the Minim, the Crotchet, and the Quaver, in Music.

In 1798, in Lindley Murray's English Grammar, the semicolon is introduced as follows:

The Semicolon is used for dividing a compound sentence into two or more parts, not so closely connected as those which are separated by a comma, nor yet so little dependent on each other, as those which are distinguished by a colon.

The semicolon is sometimes used, when the preceding member of the sentence does not of itself give a complete sense, but depends on the following clause; and sometimes when the sense member would be complete without the concluding one; [...]

Natural languages

English

Although terminal marks (i.e. full stops, exclamation marks, and question marks) indicate the end of a sentence, the comma, semicolon, and colon are normally sentence-internal, making them secondary boundary marks. The semicolon falls between terminal marks and the comma; its strength is equal to that of the colon.

The plural of semicolon in English is semicola or semicolons.

The most common use of the semicolon is to join two independent clauses without using a conjunction like "and". Semicolons are followed by a lower case letter, unless that letter would ordinarily be capitalised mid-sentence (e.g., the word "I", acronyms/initialisms, or proper nouns). In older English printed texts, colons and semicolons are offset from the preceding word by a non-breaking space, a convention still current in present-day continental French texts. Ideally, the space is less wide than the inter-word spaces. Some guides recommend separation by a hair space. Modern style guides recommend no space before them and one space after. They also typically recommend placing semicolons outside ending quotation marks, although this was not always the case. For example, the first edition of The Chicago Manual of Style (1906) recommended placing the semicolon inside ending quotation marks.

Applications of the semicolon in English include:

• Between items in a series or listing when the items contain internal punctuation, especially parenthetic commas, where the semicolons function as the serial commas for the entire series or listing. The semicolon divides the items on the list from each other, to avoid having a jumble of commas with differing functions which could cause confusion for the reader. This is sometimes called the "super comma" function of the semicolon:
  • The people present were Jamie, a man from New Zealand; John, the milkman's son; and George, a gaunt kind of man with no friends.
  • Several fast food restaurants can be found within the following cities: London, England; Paris, France; Dublin, Ireland; and Madrid, Spain.
  • Here are three examples of familiar sequences: one, two, and three; a, b, and c; first, second, and third.
  • (Fig. 8; see also plates in Harley 1941, 1950; Schwab 1947).
• Between closely related independent clauses not conjoined with a coordinating conjunction, when the two clauses are balanced, opposed or contradictory:
  • My wife would like tea; I would prefer coffee.
  • I went to the basketball court; I was told it was closed for cleaning.
  • I told Kate she's running for the hills; I wonder if she knew I was joking.
• In rare instances, when a comma replaces a period (full stop) in a quotation, or when a quotation otherwise links two independent sentences:
  • "I have no use for this," he said; "you are welcome to it."
  • "Is this your book?" she asked; "I found it on the floor."

In a list or sequence, if even one item needs its own internal comma, use of the semicolon as the separator throughout that list is justified, as shown by this example from the California Penal Code:

A crime or public offense is an act committed or omitted in violation of a law forbidding or commanding it, and to which is annexed, upon conviction, either of the following punishments:

1. Death;

2. Imprisonment;

3. Fine;

4. Removal from office; or,

5. Disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit in this State.

Arabic

In Arabic, the semicolon is called fasila manqoota (Arabic: فاصلة منقوطة) which means literally "a dotted comma", and is written inverted ؛. In Arabic, the semicolon has several uses:

• It can be used between two phrases, in which the first phrase causes the second.
  • Example: "He played a lot; so, his clothes became dirty". (Arabic: لَعِبَ كَثِيرًا؛ فَٱتَّسَخَتْ مَلَابِسُهُ.)
• It can be used between two phrases, where the second is a reason for the first.
  • Example: "Your sister did not get high marks; she didn't study". (Arabic: لم تحقق أختك درجات عالية؛ لأنها لم تدرس .)

Greek, Church Slavonic

Main article: Question mark § Greek question mark

In Greek and Church Slavonic, the question mark looks exactly the way a semicolon looks in English, similar to the question mark used in Latin. To indicate a long pause or to separate sections that already contain commas (the semicolon's purposes in English), Greek uses, but extremely rarely, the Greek: άνω τελεία, romanized: áno teleía, lit. 'up dot', an Interpunct ·.

Church Slavonic with a question mark: гдѣ єсть рождeйсѧ царь їудeйскій; (Where is the one who is born king of the Jews? – Matthew 2:1)

Greek with a question mark: Τι είναι μια διασύνδεση; (What is an interpunct?)

French

In French, a semicolon (point-virgule, literally "dot-comma") is a separation between two full sentences, used where neither a colon nor a comma would be appropriate. The phrase following a semicolon has to be an independent clause, related to the previous one but not explaining it. (When the second clause explains the first one, French consistently uses a colon.)

The dash character is used in French writing too, but not as widely as the semicolon. Usage of these devices (semicolon and dash) varies from author to author.

Literature

Just as there are writers who worship the semicolon, there are other high stylists who dismiss it — who label it, if you please, middle-class.

Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots, and Leaves

Some authors have avoided and rejected the usage of the semicolon throughout their works. Lynne Truss stated:

Samuel Beckett spliced his way merrily through such novels as Molloy and Malone Dies, thumbing his nose at the semicolon all the way. James Joyce preferred the colon, as he thought it was more authentically classical. P. G. Wodehouse did an effortlessly marvelous job without it, George Orwell tried to avoid the semicolon completely in Coming Up for Air (1939), Martin Amis included just one semicolon in Money (1984), and Umberto Eco was congratulated by an academic reader for using zero semicolons in The Name of the Rose (1983).

In response to Truss, Ben Macintyre, a columnist in The Times, wrote:

Americans have long regarded the semi-colon with suspicion, as a genteel, self-conscious, neither-one-thing-nor-the other sort of punctuation mark, with neither the butchness of a full colon nor the flighty promiscuity of the comma. Hemingway, Chandler and Stephen King wouldn't be seen dead in a ditch with a semi-colon (though Truman Capote might). Real men, goes the unwritten rule of American punctuation, don't use semi-colons.

Semicolon use in British fiction has declined by 25% from 1991 to 2021.

Character encoding

The semicolon has an assigned value in computer character encoding standards. In ASCII it is encoded as 0x3B, in EBCDIC it is encoded as 0x5E, and in Unicode it is encoded as U+003B.

Unicode contains encoding for several semicolon characters:

• U+003B ; SEMICOLON – inherited from ASCII
• U+037E ; GREEK QUESTION MARK
• U+061B ؛ ARABIC SEMICOLON – Arabic script
• U+1364 ፤ ETHIOPIC SEMICOLON – Geʽez script
• U+204F ⁏ REVERSED SEMICOLON – used in old writing systems, such as Hungarian Runic and Sindhi language
• U+236E ⍮ APL FUNCTIONAL SYMBOL SEMICOLON UNDERBAR – used in the APL programming language
• U+2E35 ⸵ TURNED SEMICOLON – "indicates sudden glottal closure"
• U+A6F6 ꛶ BAMUM SEMICOLON – Bamum script
• U+FE14 ︔ PRESENTATION FORM FOR VERTICAL SEMICOLON – determines orientation when wide-character scripts are written vertically instead of horizontally
• U+FE54 ﹔ SMALL SEMICOLON – Small Form Variants are for compatibility with Chinese National Standard CNS 11643
• U+FF1B ； FULLWIDTH SEMICOLON – for use in wide-character scripts such as kanji
• U+E003B TAG SEMICOLON – deprecated tags block

Computing

See also: Colon (punctuation) § Computing

Programming

In computer programming, the semicolon is often used to separate multiple statements (for example, in Perl, Pascal, and SQL; see Pascal: Semicolons as statement separators). In other languages, semicolons are called terminators and are required after every statement (such as in PL/I, Java, and the C family). Today semicolons as terminators has largely won out, but this was a divisive issue in programming languages from the 1960s into the 1980s. An influential and frequently cited study in this debate was Gannon & Horning (1975), which concluded strongly in favor of semicolon as a terminator: "The most important [result] was that having a semicolon as a statement terminator was better than having a semicolon as a statement separator." The study has been criticized as flawed by proponents of semicolon as a separator, due to participants being familiar with a semicolon-as-terminator language and unrealistically strict grammar. Nevertheless, the debate ended in favor of semicolon as terminator. Therefore, semicolon provides structure to the programming language.

Semicolons are optional in a number of languages, including BCPL, Python, R, Eiffel, and Go, meaning that they are part of the formal grammar for the language, but can be inferred in many or all contexts (e.g. by end of line that ends a statement, as in Go and R). As languages can be designed without them, semicolons are considered an unnecessary nuisance by some.

The use of semicolons in control-flow structures and blocks of code is varied – semicolons are generally omitted after a closing brace, but included for a single statement branch of a control structure (the "then" clause), except in Pascal, where a semicolon terminates the entire if...then...else clause (to avoid dangling else) and thus is not allowed between a "then" and the corresponding "else", as this causes unnesting.

This use originates with ALGOL 60 and falls between the comma , – used as a list separator – and the period/full stop . – used to mark the end of the program. The semicolon, as a mark separating statements, corresponds to the ordinary English usage of separating independent clauses and gives the entire program the gross syntax of a single ordinary sentence. Of these other characters, whereas commas have continued to be widely used in programming for lists (and rare other uses, such as the comma operator that separates expressions in C), they are rarely used otherwise, and the period as the end of the program has fallen out of use. The last major use of the comma, semicolon, and period hierarchy is in Erlang (1986), where commas separate expressions; semicolons separate clauses, both for control flow and for function clauses; and periods terminate statements, such as function definitions or module attributes, not the entire program. Drawbacks of having multiple different separators or terminators (compared to a single terminator and single grouping, as in semicolon-and-braces) include mental overhead in selecting punctuation, and overhead in rearranging code, as this requires not only moving lines around, but also updating the punctuation.

In some cases the distinction between a separator and a terminator is strong, such as early versions of Pascal, where a final semicolon yields a syntax error. In other cases a final semicolon is treated either as optional syntax or as being followed by a null statement, which is either ignored or treated as a NOP (no operation or null command); compare trailing commas in lists. In some cases a blank statement is allowed, allowing a sequence of semicolons or the use of a semicolon by itself as the body of a control-flow structure. For example, a blank statement (a semicolon by itself) stands for a NOP in C/C++, which is useful in busy waiting synchronization loops.

APL uses semicolons to separate declarations of local variables and to separate axes when indexing multidimensional arrays, for example, matrix[2;3].

Other languages (for instance, some assembly languages and LISP dialects, CONFIG.SYS and INI files) use semicolons to mark the beginning of comments.

Example C code:

int main() {
  int x, y;
  x = 1; y = 2;
  printf("X + Y = %d", x + y);
  return 0;
}

Or in JavaScript:

var x = 1; var y = 2;
alert("X + Y = " + (x + y));

Conventionally, in many languages, each statement is written on a separate line, but this is not typically a requirement of the language. In the above examples, two statements are placed on the same line; this is legal, because the semicolon separates the two statements. Thus programming languages like Java, the C family, Javascript etc. use semicolons to obtain a proper structure in the respective languages.

Data

The semicolon is often used to separate elements of a string of text. For example, multiple e-mail addresses in the "To" field in some e-mail clients have to be delimited by a semicolon.

In Microsoft Excel, the semicolon is used as a list separator, especially in cases where the decimal separator is a comma, such as 0,32; 3,14; 4,50, instead of 0.32, 3.14, 4.50.

In Lua, semicolons or commas can be used to separate table elements.

In MATLAB and GNU Octave, the semicolon can be used as a row separator when defining a vector or matrix (whereas a comma separates the columns within a row of a vector or matrix) or to execute a command silently, without displaying the resulting output value in the console.

In HTML, a semicolon is used to terminate a character entity reference, either named or numeric. The declarations of a style attribute in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are separated and terminated with semicolons.

The file system of RSX-11 and OpenVMS, Files-11, uses semicolons to indicate a file's version number. The semicolon is permitted in long filenames in the Microsoft Windows file systems NTFS and VFAT, but not in its short names.

In some delimiter-separated values file formats, the semicolon is used as the separator character, as an alternative to comma-separated values.

Mathematics

In the argument list of a mathematical function ${\displaystyle f(x_1,x_2,\dots ;a_1,a_2,\dots )}$, a semicolon may be used to separate variables from fixed parameters.

In differential geometry, a semicolon preceding an index is used to indicate the covariant derivative of a function with respect to the coordinate associated with that index.

In the calculus of relations, the semicolon is used in infix notation for the composition of relations: ${\displaystyle A;B=\{(x,z):\mathrm{\exists }yxAy\wedge yBz\}.}$

The ; Humphrey point is sometimes used as the "decimal point" in duodecimal numbers: 54;6₁₂ equals 64.5₁₀.

Other uses

The semicolon is commonly used as parts of emoticons, in order to indicate winking or crying, as in ;) and ;_;.

Project Semicolon is the name of a faith-based anti-suicide initiative (since the semicolon continues a sentence rather than ending it) which has led to the punctuation mark becoming a highly symbolic and popular tattoo, which is most commonly done on the wrist.