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 , , "dòuhào") in China. Since East Asian typography permits commas to join clauses dealing with certain topics or lines of thought, commas may separate subjects and predicates and constructions that would be considered a "comma splice" in English are acceptable and commonly encountered. Korean punctuation uses both commas and interpuncts for lists. In Unicode 5.2.0 "numbers with commas" ( through ) were added to the Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement block for compatibility with the ARIB STD B24 character set. The comma in the Arabic script (used by Arabic, Urdu, and Persian, etc.) is inverted, upside-down: " (), in order to