Comma Exam Review
KoMMA (Greek): Something Cut off
∙ dot system
created by Aristophanes in Greece, 3rd century bc
/ virgule or slash, used from 13th
to 17th century
, invented by the
printer Aldus Manutius a little before 1500
No commas originally in
the Bible (or any ancient religious
text), BeoWulf, The Canterbury Tales, and so on because they predate the modern
comma. Commas only appear in
contemporary translations of these texts.
Shakespeare misused
commas because they had not been formalized yet; he used them to denote breaths
for the actors performing his plays.
A .csv file means “comma-separated values.”
The comma in html is ,
