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Items may be given with initial lowercase or in sentence case. No final punctuation is used in most cases. Semicolons may be used when the list is short, items are lowercase, and the entire list forms a complete sentence (typically with its introductory phrase and possibly with a closing phrase after the list to complete the sentence).
Many programming languages provide support for list data types, and have special syntax and semantics for lists and list operations. A list can often be constructed by writing the items in sequence, separated by commas, semicolons, and/or spaces, within a pair of delimiters such as parentheses '()', brackets '[]', braces '{}', or angle brackets
Uses of the semicolon in English include: Between items in a series or listing when the items contain internal punctuation, especially parenthetic commas, where the semicolons function as the serial commas for the series or listing. The semicolon divides the items on the list from each other, to avoid having a jumble of commas with differing ...
There should be a space after a closing bracket, except where a punctuation mark follows (though a spaced dash would still be spaced after a closing bracket) and in unusual cases similar to those listed for opening brackets. Avoid adjacent sets of brackets. Either put the parenthetical phrases in one set separated by semicolons, or rewrite:
The comma's use is consistent with the conventional practice of the region. [28] It can resolve ambiguity (see examples below). [29] [30] [31] Its use is consistent with other means of separating items in a list (for example, when semicolons are used to separate items, one is always included before the last item). [32]
The trailing semicolon is mandatory in XML (and XHTML) for these five entities (even if HTML or SGML allows omitting it for some of them, according to their DTD). ISO Entity Sets SGML supplied a comprehensive set of entity declarations for characters widely used in Western technical and reference publishing, for Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts.
The enumeration or ideographic comma (U+3001 、 IDEOGRAPHIC COMMA) is used in Chinese, [37]: 20 Japanese punctuation, and somewhat in Korean punctuation. In China and Korea, this comma ( 顿号 ; 頓號 ; dùnhào ) is usually only used to separate items in lists, while it is the more common form of comma in Japan ( 読点 , tōten , lit.
For example, "Stop!" has the punctuation inside the quotation marks because the word "stop" is said with emphasis. However, when using "scare quotes", the comma goes outside. Other examples: Arthur said the situation was "deplorable". (The full stop (period) is not part of the quotation.)