Lesson Six, Norms

Punctuation

Serbo-Croatian punctuation follows the logic of the sentence. In that respect it is quite similar to its English counterpart. One observable difference is that the punctuation mark ending the sentence follows quotation marks, for example:

Vidio sam ga u "Plavom jahaču". "I saw him at the "Blue rider."

Native speakers have the most difficulties with the placing of the comma. The following principal rules apply in that area:

• Dependent clauses preceding main clauses are always separated by a comma. In other words, if the part of the sentence starting with a conjunction is at the beginning, that part will be separated by a comma, for example:.
  Da je otišao, nisam znao. 'That he left, I did not know', as opposed to: Nisam znao da je otišao 'I did not know he left'.
  
• Embedded dependent sentences are always separated by commas if they do not modify the noun, for example:
  Taj student, ako ne bude učio, neće završiti fakultet. 'That student, if he does not study, will not graduate from the university.'
  
• Dependent clauses modifying nouns are not separated by commas if they narrow the meaning of the noun, for example:
  Student koga sam danas vidio. 'The student whom I saw today' (i.e., not just any student but exactly that one I saw)
  as opposed to:
  Marko Marković, koga sam danas vidio. 'John Doe, whom I saw today' (i.e., we already know who he is).
  
• Dependent clauses following the main clause can be separated from the main clause, or not, depending on the assessment of the writer about them being intimately connected with the main clause (they are not separated then), or not (one uses the comma in that situation). Therefore, there is no need to learn any rules in this situation.

  In some situations Serbian punctuation differs from Croatian and Bosnian Muslim. For example, the abbreviation for doctorate is spelled with the dot (i.e., dr. or dr. sci.) in Croatian and Bosnian Muslim, and without the dot (i.e., dr) in Serbian.