Serial comma The judge in the case said that 43 of the 50 U.S. states had mandated the use of a serial comma and that both chambers of the federal congress had warned against omitting it, in the words of the U.S. House Legislative Counsel's Manual on Drafting Style, "to prevent[] any misreading that the last item is part of the preceding one"; only 7 states "either do not require or expressly prohibited the use of the serial comma". In the following languages, the serial comma is not the norm and may go against punctuation rules: Serial comma In English language punctuation,
Punctuation and the "exclamation comma". The "question comma" has a comma instead of the dot at the bottom of a question mark, while the "exclamation comma" has a comma in place of the point at the bottom of an exclamation mark. These were intended for use as question and exclamation marks within a sentence, a function for which normal question and exclamation marks can also be used, but which may be considered obsolescent. The patent application entered into the national phase only in Canada. It was advertised as lapsing in Australia on 27 January 1994 and in Canada on 6 November