Comma

The comma (,) is a punctuation mark shaped like a little left-oriented drop, placed on the baseline of the text and used in a lot of writing systems to indicate a pause in a sentence or to separate things; in a few languages, it also serves as a diacritic mark below a letter (for instance: ș, ț).

Use as a diacritic mark

In Romanian

As a diacritic mark, the comma below ș and ț occurs mainly in Romanian (a Romance language):

• ș is pronounced [ʃ] (in contrast with s pronounced [s])
• ț is pronounced [ts] (in contrast with t pronounced [t])

The comma below is often replaced by a cedilla (ș and ț becoming ş and ţ) but in an accurate typography, the comma should be preferred. This is a computing input problem, especially due to an error of the first Unicode conventions. Since the end of the 2000's, later versions of Unicode and of various operating systems have tended to resolve this problem by providing an accurate comma on ș and ț.

It has to be noted that other languages use a cedilla on ş and not a comma (Turkish, Azeri, Volga Tatar, Crimean Tatar, Gagauz, Turkmen, Kurdish).

In Latvian

In Latvian (a Baltic language), a sort of comma or cedilla is found on the letters ģ (uppercase: Ģ), ķ, ļ and ņ. For more information, please see the article about the cedilla.