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
Irony punctuation Irony punctuation Irony punctuation is any proposed form of notation used to denote irony or sarcasm in text. Written English lacks a standard way to mark irony, and several forms of punctuation have been proposed. Among the oldest and most frequently attested is the percontation point proposed by English printer Henry Denham in the 1580s, and the irony mark, used by Marcellin Jobard and French poet Alcanter de Brahm during the 19th century. Both marks take the form of a reversed question mark, "⸮". Irony punctuation is primarily used to indicate that a sentence should be understood at a second