2970: Comma from Slash Feb 7, 2025

In French, a comma is known as a ‘virgule’, a word that exists in English too, but it means ‘slash’, as in ‹ / ›, which in French is now known as “une barre oblique”. This is not from the English being confused about the meaning, but that the comma symbol evolved from a slash and ended up as ‹ , › through gradual simplification. The original comma, as it were, was not curled either, and the practice of curling around the previous letter developed later, probably not for any specific reason. The slash was still kept, but for less specific types of divisions of, usually, elements as opposed to clauses.