comma

n.

1. Grammar. A punctuation mark ( , ) used to indicate a separation of ideas or of elements within the structure of a sentence.
2. A pause or separation; a caesura.
3. Any of several butterflies of the genus Polygonia, having wings with brownish coloring and irregularly notched edges.

[Latin, from Greek komma, piece cut off, short clause, from koptein, to cut.]

In programming, the comma (,) is used to separate values in a function call. For example, in the C statement printf ("The result is %s\n", amount); the comma separates the display string from the name of the variable.

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A small interval, usually taken to be one-ninth of a whole tone; the commas used in temperament and tuning are of approximately 21.5 or 23.5 cents.

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A punctuation mark (,) used to indicate pauses and to separate elements within a sentence. “The forest abounds with oak, elm, and beech trees”; “The bassoon player was born in Roanoke, Virginia, on December 29, 1957.”

IN BRIEF: The punctuation mark , used to provide a pause in text.

Hillary didn't know there should be a comma between the name of a city and a state.

Tutor's tip: A "coma" is an unconscious condition caused by accident or disease, a "comma" is a mark of punctuation that looks like (,) and indicates a pause in a sentence, while "karma" is the Hindu belief that actions determine a person's destiny in his or her next

Dansk (Danish)
n. - komma

Nederlands (Dutch)
komma, cesuur

Français (French)
n. - virgule

Deutsch (German)
n. - Komma

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (τυπογρ.) κόμμα

Italiano (Italian)
virgola

Português (Portuguese)
n. - vírgula (f)

Русский (Russian)
запятая

Español (Spanish)
n. - coma

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - komma

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
逗点, 逗号

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 逗點, 逗號

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 쉼표, 소음정

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - コンマ

idioms:

• inverted commas    インバーテッドコンマ

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) فاصله, فارزة‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮פסיק‬

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