13

Possible Duplicate:
Where should the comma be placed in the salutation of a letter?

I was thinking today about comma usage and the typical first output for a beginning programmer. In the typical example you see "Hello World" but does proper sentence construction/comma usage rules dictate there be a comma between the greeting and the thing being greeted.

I.e. should a proper sentence read "Hello, World"?

Community
  • 1
Brad
  • 537
  • I've voted General Reference, but maybe I should have said Not Constructive. There's no "rule of grammar" in play here, and some people do insert a comma. Most don't, as OP should know if he's ever received a letter or email starting with "Hello Brad[,]". People very rarely put a comma between the greeting and the addressee's name in that context. – FumbleFingers Jul 18 '12 at 16:04
  • 1
    I voted off topic. It's not general reference; there is no general reference on comma usage, and it's not about English grammar and usage because it's about punctuation. It's hard to choose sometimes. – John Lawler Jul 18 '12 at 16:06
  • 4
    +1 I can't see that it's off-topic. English grammar includes punctuation; there's a reason why we have the punctuation tags. It's also not really gen ref, for the reason Prof. Lawler pointed out. Not Constructive is the closest bet, I'd say; but I can't bring myself to vote to close this one. I was almost about to say there has* to be a duplicate of this somewhere*, but I would like to sound rather less trigger-happy. – Daniel Jul 18 '12 at 16:21
  • 4
    I searched for duplicates before I posted this. And sure, people don't put the comma in a salutation but shouldn't they? If the answer is "no" that is perfectly acceptable. – Brad Jul 18 '12 at 16:23
  • @Daniel I agree with you, but I do note vote up because that does not seem to be the best question that I have never seen. –  Jul 18 '12 at 16:26
  • I think asking about a computer program title is off-topic. If you were to reword the question to ask about the punctuation of salutations in general (and misuse thereof), then you're asking about a more general English problem and the question would be more appropriate here. – Lynn Jul 18 '12 at 16:30
  • @John Lawler: I find I increasingly side with you on the matter of punctuation. As you're wont to say, language is essentially a spoken phenomenon - punctuation is bordering on irrelevant. I realise quite a few people here either want to ask or answer issues of orthography - but most of the time, I wish they wouldn't. – FumbleFingers Jul 18 '12 at 16:36
  • 1
    I was trying to think of how the comma is important here like it would be in these sentences: "John read the book" and "John, read the book". Those are two very different things and I wasn't sure if the same logic would apply here. – Brad Jul 18 '12 at 16:42
  • @JohnLawler: Despite it not being a linguistic phenomenon, punctuation is considered well with the scope of ELU (see the FAQ). – Mitch Jul 18 '12 at 16:42
  • 1
    @Mitch: I did say I realise that. I just get fed up with what so often ends up being pointless discussion on matters of choice, and quoting of style guides. – FumbleFingers Jul 18 '12 at 16:45
  • 1
    @FumbleFingers: punctuation is on-topic and is well represented here. See the FAQ. (I'm not making any statement otherwise about the quality of this question) – Mitch Jul 18 '12 at 16:57
  • @FumbleFingers: OK. Yeah lots of things are matters of choice, punctuation or otherwise. – Mitch Jul 18 '12 at 16:58
  • 3
    @Carlo_R. How can you vote on questions you've never seen? Anyhow, everyone who only voted on the best post they ever saw would only vote once. – Daniel Jul 18 '12 at 17:01
  • 1
    If you ignore the fact that the question contains a reference to programming (which is, I suspect, the reason for all the upvotes), how is this question different from Where should the comma be placed in the salutation of a letter? – Cameron Jul 18 '12 at 17:08
  • 1
    @Danielδ: Sorry, English grammar does not include punctuation. English punctuation is not standard; it has nothing to do with English grammar; and there are no grammatical rules that govern it. There is no punctuation in language, only in orthography. – John Lawler Jul 18 '12 at 17:13
  • 1
    Re the close. The question is decidedly not off-topic, but it is a dupe of the question Cameron cited. – Mitch Jul 18 '12 at 17:13
  • @JohnLawler I take your point; I should have said that the domain of English Language and Usage includes, or at least overlaps, the domain of orthography. As Mitch said, punctuation is on-topic and as such, well represented in this site. The FAQ says: Questions on the following topics are welcomed here: [...] Spelling and punctuation – Daniel Jul 18 '12 at 17:32
  • That's true, but unfortunate. I agree with FF above: I'm afraid that questions about punctuation are rarely answered consistently and well here, no matter how definitively. – John Lawler Jul 18 '12 at 17:44
  • 1
    Well, I've certainly learned my lesson here...I was not expecting such a harsh reaction to, what I thought was, a simple curiosity. Especially since i was using established tags which seemed to fit my question. – Brad Jul 18 '12 at 18:04
  • 1
    Question is on-topic as per FAQ entry regarding punctutation, is reasonably constructive, is a real question, is not too localized, and is not clearly "basic and trivial". No duplicates have been suggested; question accordingly reopened. – waiwai933 Jul 18 '12 at 18:28
  • @Brad I sympathize with you; IMO we (I included) have increasingly become too quick to close and find fault with questions. Please realize that there has been a bunch of real garbage asked on this site of late, and that even some of the veteran users have become paranoid and/or apathetic about question quality here. Now watch as I get whipped off my feet for saying that... but I hope you can understand, and that your experience hasn't been too negative. – Daniel Jul 18 '12 at 19:02
  • 1
    @waiwai933: sadly needs to be closed because it's a dupe. – Mitch Jul 18 '12 at 19:08
  • @Danielδ Thanks. I understand this stuff coming to a head somewhere...it just happens to be my question. This certainly has not given me a negative impression or anything, that's just the way it is. – Brad Jul 18 '12 at 19:26
  • 2
    And remember, since it looks like it really is a duplicate, that closing as a duplicate (especially an obscure and non-obvious one) is the most honorable of the close reasons :) – Daniel Jul 18 '12 at 19:28
  • @Cameron: How is this question different from 'Where should the comma be placed in the salutation of a letter?' I'll say where I see the difference; the FAQ says to ask practical questions based on actual problems that you face. If I'm writing a business letter, I don't want to appear illiterate – I need to know where that comma goes. If I'm making sure I can compile a program and spit output onto the screen, it matters little whether or not I've punctuated my output correctly. Grammatically, there may be very little difference, but I see a wide gulf in the practicality of the two questions. – J.R. Jul 19 '12 at 10:07
  • Since the first thing that a "Hello World" program does is terminates, it might be better to call it a "Goodbye, cruel world." program. – Pitarou Jul 19 '12 at 10:31
  • The "correct" presentation of the words is exactly that used by Kernighan and Ritchie in the very first demo program written in the C programming language. – Hot Licks Aug 12 '15 at 02:23

3 Answers3

5

Whilst according to my memory inserting the comma is technically correct, it is now rarely seen in everyday communications. I favour Hello World, therefore.

Daniel
  • 57,547
Tony Balmforth
  • 3,515
5

Conventional orthography demands:

Hello, world!

but, given the context, it doesn't really matter what you type. In my experience, the following is common:

Hello world

Since a "Hello world" program terminates immediately after printing its message, I personally prefer:

Goodbye, world.

Pitarou
  • 13,861
4

For what it's worth, Wikipedia calls it the "Hello world" program, but indicates there should be a comma in the output:

A "Hello world" program is a computer program that outputs "Hello, world" on a display device.

Other sources make this two-word phrase an exclamation:

Lesson: A Closer Look at the "Hello World!" Application

Now that you've seen the "Hello World!" application (and perhaps even compiled and run it), you might be wondering how it works. Here again is its code:

class HelloWorldApp {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Hello World!"); // Display the string.
    }
}

Other times, both the comma and the exclamation point are used:

Hello, world! programs make the text "Hello, world!" appear on a computer screen.

Incidentally, this website lists several Hello world programs, most of which use both the comma and the exclamation point, although there are a few exceptions, like this one:

xhello db 'Hello world !!!$'

Ultimately, though, in this context, it matters very little what's between the quotation marks, so long as the program runs.

Laurel
  • 66,382
J.R.
  • 58,828
  • 5
  • 95
  • 196
  • +1 for actually answering and addressing the concerns of the initial reaction to remove the question. This is what I was looking for. – T. Markle Apr 13 '14 at 04:11