Comma the purpose of the comma. There are also a number of comma-like diacritics with "COMMA" in their Unicode names. These do not serve a punctuation function. A comma-like low quotation mark is also available (shown below; raised single quotation marks are not shown). Various other Unicode characters combine commas or comma-like figures with other characters, and are not shown here. In the 3rd century BC, Aristophanes of Byzantium invented a system of single dots ("distinctiones") that separated verses (colometry) and indicated the amount of breath needed to complete each fragment of the text when reading aloud. The different lengths were
Comma signified by a dot at the bottom, middle, or top of the line. For a short passage (a "komma"), a "media distinctio" dot was placed mid-level ( · ). This is the origin of the concept of a comma, although the name came to be used for the mark itself instead of the clause it separated. The mark used today is descended from a diagonal slash, or "virgula suspensiva" ( / ), used from the 13th to 17th centuries to represent a pause. The modern comma was first used by Aldus Manutius. In general, the comma shows that the words