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Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

A Way with Words, a radio show and podcast about language and linguistics.

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Where does a comma go?
stevenz
Auckland
30 Posts
(Offline)
1
2014/10/29 - 12:07am
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Here in New Zealand I have noticed several instances of commas placed before the next clause ,not after the preceding one. At first I thought it was someone who was not well educated, careless ,or confused. Since then I have seen it in the writing of any number of people.

Is this an alternative rule? An archaic usage? Regional?

Guest
2
2014/10/29 - 5:03am
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I haven't seen it. But if it is that sudden and that consistent, I guess it is related to technology. Maybe there is a technology product or app that automatically inserts a space and, rather than removing the space to insert the comma, people are leaving the space before the comma and omitting the space after.

Are you seeing a space before other punctuation ,too ? That would be a clue .

deaconB
744 Posts
(Offline)
3
2014/10/30 - 5:23am
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Could this be a common touch-typing error, like spelling the definite article "hte", rather than something done deliberately?

stevenz
Auckland
30 Posts
(Offline)
4
2014/10/31 - 4:28pm
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Hmm. Interesting options. I have to think about - and further notice - what sort of medium they're using.

Ron Draney
721 Posts
(Offline)
5
2014/10/31 - 7:13pm
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I think I've seen this on Usenet, and it turned out that the convention in French is to put space before punctuation like commas and periods instead of after. Or maybe it had something to do with parentheses.

Guest
6
2014/10/31 - 7:40pm
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If the purpose is to cause a pause in the mental parsing, putting a space before the comma definitely worked on me. Never saw that done before. Would probably grow less jarring over time, but it just looks wrong now.

Guest
7
2014/11/01 - 3:02am
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I don't remember seeing it in French, either.

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