Template:,/documentation

See also: Template:comma

Usage

This template produces a comma which can be shown or hidden, as controlled by users' settings. It should be used in the place of serial commas, the commas preceding the final conjunction in lists of three or more items. If and is placed in parameter 1, an "and" which can be similarly shown or hidden will be added after the comma: {{,|and}} → , and. This template should not be used in the lieu of commas where the sentence would be ambiguous without them.

Discussion

A wide variety of opinions exist regarding the use of serial commas, an overview of which may be found at English Wikipedia's page on serial commas. This template allows articles to be coded such that they can be made to accommodate the variety of opinions users have about serial commas.

Editors may enter text into articles as they would usually, in either serial comma style or no-serial-comma style. If the no-serial-comma style allows that the final comma may or must be omitted, any editor may replace it with a suppressible comma if the sentence is unambiguous without it. Any editor may add a suppressible comma, instead of a usual comma, before a final conjunction.

This template produces a comma within the CSS class serial-comma. By default, content marked with such the class is hidden. To display serial commas, as well as serial semicolons, tagged with this CSS class add the following code to your common.css:

.serial-comma { display: inline; }

To display "and"s generated by this template add the following code to your common.css:

.serial-and { display: inline; }

Example

This markup: We went to see Jane, Jean{{,}} and John.

• by default displays as: We went to see Jane, Jean and John.
• displays for you as: We went to see Jane, Jean, and John.
• displays for serial-comma enabled users as: We went to see Jane, Jean, and John.

See also

• {{serial semicolon}} – the corresponding template for semicolons