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COMMA (Gr. Kbµµa, a thing stamped or cut off, from Koirrecv, to strike)
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COMMA (Gr. Kbµµa, a thing stamped or cut off, from Koirrecv, to strike), originally, in Greek rhetoric, a short clause, something less than the " colon "; hence a mark (,), in punctuation, to show the smallest break in the construction of a sentence. The mark is also used to separate numerals, mathematical symbols and the like. Inverted commas, or " quotation-marks," i.e.pairs of commas, the first inverted, and the last upright, are placed at the beginning and end of a sentence or word quoted, or of a word used in a technical or conventional sense; single commas are similarly used for quotations within quotations. The word is also applied to comma-shaped objects, such as the " comma-bacillus," the causal agent in cholera.