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Commas are perhaps the greatest source of difficulty. Life can, however, be simplified by the realisation that there are basically only three situations in scientific English in which commas are necessary. There is also one situation in which a comma is not necessary. These four situations are outlined below.

Use commas when making a list such as “u, v, x, y and z”. British English does not require a comma before “and” whereas American English does. The presence or absence of a comma before the “and” will not affect the success of your manuscript. In the related list “p, q, r as well as t”, neither British nor American English requires a comma before “as well”.

Use commas as weaker brackets to show material that is not central to the sentence. You might want to write the following sentence.

“Our latest results, obtained using a recently developed technique, also support our overall hypothesis.”

The information between the commas provides extra information which is not essential to understand the meaning of the sentence.

Use a comma after a linking word (that is words such as “however”, “furthermore”, “additionally”) at the start of a sentence, or after a phrase that qualifies or introduces the main part of the sentence. This will tell the reader where to look for the main part of the sentence. For instance, look closely at the following sentence.

“As expected, levels of bacterial growth increased during the course of the illness.”

Try reading the sentence without the comma and you will notice how the meaning changes. Here are further examples of this comma in scientific writing:

“To investigate this idea, we performed the experiment in Figure 1.”

“Although these guidelines do not show every possible use of the comma, they are very useful.”

“Provided that you are careful in its use, a spellchecker is a valuable tool.

Do not use a comma before “that” in a sentence such as “We showed that this hypothesis is false.” Unlike some other languages, this is one situation in which a comma in English is not needed.