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The Danish Comma War

Let us take a brief look at the somewhat turbulent history of the comma to see how the confusion surrounding the Danish comma emerged.

The history of the current comma dates back over 100 years. In 1918, an official rule for the use of commas in Danish was introduced for the first time. Even back then, it required a great deal of focus. The recommended comma was the "grammatical comma," which, simply put, is determined by the number of subjects and verbs in a sentence. At the same time, however, the "pause comma" was also permitted, where commas are placed based on the rhythm of the sentence and the natural pauses desired by the writer – similar to the English comma.

The two comma styles coexisted relatively peacefully until 1996, when things really started to stir. Dansk Sprognævn (The Danish Language Council) decided to abolish the pause comma and instead introduced a new comma with the original name… “Nyt komma” (“New comma”). This new comma aimed to make Danish writing a bit less comma-heavy, especially by removing all commas in front of subordinate clauses (those starting with words such as, for example, 'at' - 'that').

Dansk Sprognævn worked hard to encourage Danes to adopt the new comma – and perhaps also to remind everyone what main and subordinate clauses actually are. As part of this effort, they established “The Flying Comma Corps,” a group of young Danish students who traveled around the country teaching people the new rules. They also launched a sticker that people could place on their text to indicate that they were using the new comma and hadn’t just neglected the old one.

Despite this enthusiastic effort, the old comma proved difficult to eradicate, and before long, a real “Comma War” broke out. Prominent Danes – cultural figures and politicians – joined the fight to preserve the beloved old comma, directly opposing the Language Council’s recommendations.

Tensions were high, and when a 2002 survey revealed that only 14% of Danes had embraced the new comma, Dansk Sprognævn tried a new approach the following year to bring some peace: the so-called “Comma Compromise” of 2003. The new and old comma systems were merged into a single system with flexibility in certain situations, yet still with a recommendation to follow the rules of the new comma.

Total confusion ensued, and Danes continued to insist on using commas in the traditional grammatical way.

In 2024 – after almost 30 years of battle – Dansk Sprognævn finally threw in the towel. In the latest edition of Retskrivningsordbogen (the Danish Spelling Dictionary), set to be published in November 2024, the recommendation to follow the new comma has been removed. As a result, the rules for proper comma usage can now be boiled down to just three essential points that you can read about here.