Comma 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". 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".) 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
What a piece of work is a man What a piece of work is a man "What a piece of work is man!" is a phrase within a soliloquy by Prince Hamlet in William Shakespeare's play of the same name. Hamlet is reflecting, at first admiringly, and then despairingly, on the human condition. The soliloquy, spoken in the play by Prince Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in Act II, Scene 2, follows in its entirety. Rather than appearing in blank verse, the typical mode of composition of Shakespeare's plays, the speech appears in straight prose: Hamlet is saying that although humans may appear to think and act "nobly"