Diacritical Usage
The comma is used as a diacritic mark in Romanian under the s (Ș, ș), and under the t (Ț, ț). A cedilla is occasionally used instead of it (notably in the Unicode glyph names), but this is technically incorrect. The symbol d̦ (d with comma below) was used as part of the Romanian transitional alphabet (19th century) to indicate the sounds denoted by the Latin letter z or letters dz, where derived from a Cyrillic ѕ (/dz/). The comma and the cedilla are both derivative of a small cursive z (ʒ) placed below the letter. From this standpoint alone, ș, ț, and d̦ could potentially be regarded as stand-ins for sz, tz, and dz respectively.
In Latvian, the comma is used on the letters ģ, ķ, ļ, ņ, and historically also ŗ, to indicate palatalization. Because the lowercase letter g has a descender, the comma is rotated 180° and placed over the letter. Although their Adobe glyph names are commas, their names in the Unicode Standard are g, k, l, n, and r with a cedilla. They were introduced to the Unicode standard before 1992, and their name cannot be altered. For input Ģ use Alt 290 and Alt 291 sequences, for Ķ use Alt 310 and Alt 311, for Ļ use Alt 315 and Alt 316, for Ņ use Alt 325 and Alt 326.
In the Czech and Slovak languages, the diacritics in the characters ď, ť, and ľ resemble superscript commas, but they are modified carons because they have ascenders. Other ascender letters with carons, such as letters ȟ (used in Finnish Romani and Lakota) and ǩ (used in Skolt Sami), did not modify their carons to superscript commas.
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