Abstract

There are strict formal requirements for the use of a comma. However, there are none regarding the comma’s actual shape. In printed fonts, it is determined by the font’s specification. In handwritten texts though, the shape of the comma is variable; most writers choose from a set of straight, convex and concave shapes. By using a corpus of 1464 commas written by 99 individuals, we will present three case studies of persons whose comma shapes do somehow correlate with linguistic structures. With that, we might identify a few (possibly subconscious) shaping strategies. Some writers might mark a norm insecurity by a different comma form, others might mark the function of the entity which is segmented by the comma, or the comma type itself (sentence boundary, exposition or coordination).