How to Use comma in a Sentence

comma

noun
  • Another woman brought up the case of the dairy-truck drivers in Maine who won millions of dollars in overtime because their contract lacked a serial comma.
    Mary Norris, The New Yorker, 18 Mar. 2024
  • Knight was used to sticking to every word and comma in the script.
    Chris Nashawaty, WSJ, 19 Apr. 2018
  • In the hands of a skilled poet, even a mere comma can be the conductor of time.
    Magdalena Zurawski Anne Boyer, New York Times, 16 Feb. 2023
  • And then there’s that comma, dangling like an untied shoelace off the end of the line.
    Susan Tallman, The New York Review of Books, 2 Nov. 2023
  • Below are the five ways these financiers have joined the three-comma club.
    Tom Metcalf, Bloomberg.com, 14 May 2018
  • The comma drama has raised eyebrows—and not just in Maine.
    Erin Blakemore, Smithsonian, 16 Mar. 2017
  • Or maybe, at the risk of seeming too flippant, that comma should be a colon.
    Frank Witsil, Detroit Free Press, 27 Apr. 2023
  • The comma drama has raised eyebrows—and not just in Maine.
    Erin Blakemore, Smithsonian, 16 Mar. 2017
  • That’s fine, but the end of that sentence needs to be a comma, not a period.
    Heidi Stevens, Chicago Tribune, 13 Jan. 2023
  • There was one problem, Trosch said: A semi-colon should have been a comma.
    Jim Morrill, charlotteobserver, 27 Apr. 2018
  • Because every word and every comma of this has some of my mom in it.
    Sam Mellinger, kansascity.com, 13 May 2017
  • Cousin to the comma, niece or nephew to the colon, this kindred outcast yearns for connection.
    Gary Gilson, Star Tribune, 26 June 2021
  • On closer inspection, the comma turns out to be some schmutz or stray ink.
    Han Ong, The New Yorker, 16 Oct. 2023
  • The case of the dairy-truck drivers’ comma has got several things going for it.
    Adam Davidson, The New Yorker, 17 Mar. 2017
  • For a good hybrid mattress without a comma in the price tag, Allswell is a safe bet.
    Wired, 19 Feb. 2022
  • Changing a comma to a semicolon alters the meaning of death.
    Matthew J. Palm, orlandosentinel.com, 12 Sep. 2021
  • Refinery29 has reached out to Witherspoon's team for comment about her reprisal of Mrs. Woods comma Elle.
    Morgan Baila, refinery29.com, 4 June 2018
  • The answer depends on what role the second comma is playing.
    Dennis Duncan, Washington Post, 26 July 2022
  • The student had somehow missed the comma in the last line, which only made his paper more heartfelt.
    Arthur Krystal, The New Yorker, 17 Jan. 2022
  • Lee is the latest in a growing list of Korean entrepreneurs to join the three-comma club in recent years.
    John Kang, Forbes, 25 June 2021
  • Their poor grasp of the discretionary and nondiscretionary comma is not their fault.
    Lionel Shriver, Harper's magazine, 22 July 2019
  • In the long take, there are a lot of periods, commas, and exclamation points.
    Marlow Stern, Rolling Stone, 6 Aug. 2023
  • On the phone, Tingley-Hock comes across as a testy fellow, the kind of guy who could get prickly about a missing Oxford comma.
    Jack Hitt, Wired, 13 Aug. 2020
  • Even members of the elite three-comma club have trouble finding love sometimes.
    Laura Smythe, Forbes, 14 Feb. 2023
  • Part of the tentacle rests on a cake of black lentils, set off with dots of avocado puree, which plays the role of a comma between bites of seafood.
    Tom Sietsema, Washington Post, 11 Sep. 2019
  • Likely there was a comma that has faded over the years in between those words, but even with bran and hops, this would taste nothing like beer.
    Markus Haas, San Antonio Express-News, 3 May 2018
  • Virginia lost to a school with a comma in its name and a golden retriever as its mascot.
    Joseph Goodman, AL.com, 16 Mar. 2018
  • As host nation, Canada holds the pen; but each clause and comma will have been debated and approved.
    Theophilos Argitis, Bloomberg.com, 8 June 2018
  • But putting a comma between a verb and its direct object is not a common mistake.
    The Economist, 21 Sep. 2017
  • Laura is a proud former resident of the New Jersey shore, a competitive swimmer, and a fierce defender of the Oxford comma.
    Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 11 Apr. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'comma.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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