Hacker News Reader

I am Greek and we don't use that many commas. Definitely not in this way. I think the Greek language is also not as flexible with comma placement as perhaps English is.

What I've noticed is that some people never learned how to use them. They just write a sentence (or a whole essay) and generously sprinkle some commas afterwards, normally wherever they would make a short pause. I've seen this with colleagues from Germany, Greece, Russia and the US.

View on HN

I'm Greek also. I was taught at school that you place commas where you would naturally have a pause when speaking a sentence aloud. You can hear that rule very clearly in operation in the way school kids read when asked to read a text aloud (e.g. in national holidays etc). They always very deliberately pause after each and every comma.

Anyway, other than the last two examples, the examples above don't look wrong to me.

Russia and the US

AP style, or Oxford and a subtle political commentary? ;-)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com