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
Comma splice splice, "Tastes in punctuation are not constant. It makes no sense to accuse Jane Austen of incorrect use of the comma, as no one would have levelled this charge against her at the time. Her conventions of usage were not ours". The author and journalist Lynne Truss writes in "Eats Shoots & Leaves" that "so many highly respected writers observe the splice comma that a rather unfair rule emerges on this one: only do it if you're famous". Citing Samuel Beckett, E. M. Forster, and Somerset Maugham, she says: "Done knowingly by an established writer, the comma splice is effective,