virgola

Virgola, in Italian, refers primarily to the punctuation mark known in English as the comma. It signals a brief pause, helps separate elements in a list, and, in numbers, serves as the decimal separator (for example, 3,14). The virgola is used in many languages with a similar graphic form, though its exact typographic rules vary by language and region. The term derives from Latin virgula, a diminutive of virga meaning “stick” or “rod,” literally “little twig,” a reference to the mark’s slender shape.

In Italian typography, the virgola is placed directly after the preceding word with a space following it before the next element. It is used to divide items in a list, to set off nonessential clauses, and to indicate decimal fractions. Italian generally does not require an Oxford comma; lists typically rely on the conjunction “e” before the last item.

Historically, the comma evolved from punctuation used in ancient and early modern manuscripts and became standardized with the advent of movable-type printing in the 15th–16th centuries. Today, the virgola is encoded in Unicode as U+002C and is universally available in digital typesetting.

Outside Italian, the word for the mark in related Romance languages is vírgula (Portuguese, Galician); etymology remains Latin, and the mark itself is a core punctuation symbol used worldwide. See also comma, decimal separator.