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Overview - free, logical punctuation read off the sentence structure

Serbian punctuation follows a largely logical system: commas often set off inserted material, afterthoughts, contrasts and inverted clauses. Whether a dependent clause takes a comma also depends on its position and function; subordination alone does not trigger one automatically. Use the examples below as common patterns with exceptions, not as a single formula for every comma.

To decide whether to use a comma, first check the clause's position and function: is it closely bound to the main clause, or set off as an addition, contrast or afterthought? Then check the specific rule, since some cases are conventional and cannot be reduced to that question alone.

Bound clauses take no comma - inversion takes one

As a rule, a postposed subordinate clause that is bound to the main clause - it follows the main clause in its expected position and completes its meaning or restricts a noun - takes no comma: Мислим да је то тачно (I think that's correct); Јави се кад стигнеш (Get in touch when you arrive); Човек који седи поред прозора је мој брат (The man sitting by the window is my brother). In each case the subordinate clause completes the main clause's meaning in its normal slot - nothing inserted or displaced, so nothing marked. This is not a rule for every postposed clause: punctuation also depends on what the clause is doing, and one added as an explanatory afterthought can take a comma (јер below is the clearest case).

The moment the same clause leaves that postposed slot - typically fronted before the main clause - it counts as displaced, and the logical-punctuation principle marks it with a comma: Кад стигнеш, јави се (When you arrive, get in touch); Ако будеш имао времена, дођи (If you have time, come). The information is identical to the postposed versions above; only the word order changed, and the comma tracks that change, not the subordination itself.

The real-condition pattern from the B1 lesson on conditionals, ако + present, is exactly this: its example Ако имам времена, доћи ћу на журку. fronts the ако-clause and takes the inversion comma for that reason, not because it's a conditional. Futur II, from the B1 lesson on it, works the same way unchanged - the table's own Ако будеш имао времена, дођи. is a futur II clause, comma-marked only because it is fronted. The comma tracks word order, never which conjunction or tense is involved.

Restrictive vs. non-restrictive који - a meaning-bearing minimal pair

The B2 lesson on advanced clause syntax already flagged this distinction in passing; here it's the center of the lesson, because the comma is not decoration - it changes what the sentence says. Студенти који су положили славили су (The students who passed were celebrating) has no commas: који су положили restricts студенти to a subset - only the ones who passed were celebrating, and the sentence says nothing about the others. Студенти, који су положили, славили су (The students, who had passed, were celebrating) sets the same clause off with commas: now non-restrictive, adding incidental information to a group already fully identified - all the students were celebrating, and the writer mentions, as an aside, that they had passed.

Comma cases: vocative always, contrastive conjunctions and parentheticals as a rule, dislocation

A handful of constructions are comma-marked as a rule (the vocative without exception), because they regularly satisfy the underlying principle - something genuinely set apart from the main clause's ordinary flow. The vocative, naming who is addressed, is set off from the rest of the sentence: Марко, дођи! (Marko, come here!), and on both sides mid-sentence: Реци ми, Марко, шта се десило. Parenthetical connectors - међутим (however), дакле (therefore), наравно (of course) - are inserted comments rather than part of the grammatical structure, and are usually set off by commas wherever they land, unless tightly bound in sense and intonation to what they modify: Он је, међутим, одбио понуду.

Contrastive coordinators - а, али, него, већ - take a comma before them in their adversative use, when they join clauses or parts of a sentence in contrast, because such a contrast is a break in the sentence's expected direction: Он воли кафу, а она чај (He likes coffee, while she likes tea); Није дошао на време, него је закаснио (He didn't come on time, but rather was late). This holds even though plain coordination with и or или takes none (next section) - the contrastive conjunctions mark a turn, not a simple addition. The rule covers that adversative use only: него meaning "than" after a comparative takes no comma, a correlative frame such as не само … него и is a pattern of its own, and a fixed or elliptical phrase containing one of these words is judged as a phrase, not by the word alone.

Dislocated constituents - a phrase pulled out of its ordinary slot, re-placed for emphasis, and resumed by a pronoun - apply the same principle to word order rather than a connector: the comma after a fronted, resumed topic in the B2 lesson on word order and information structure is this same rule in action, not a separate one to relearn.

As a rule no comma before и/или or before complement да, and јер as a judgment call

Plain coordination with и (and) or или (or) as a rule takes no comma, because nothing is inserted, added on, or contrasted - it's the default way to join two equal things: Купио сам хлеб и млеко. Он ради у канцеларији и код куће. This is the same principle as the comma-marked cases above, just returning the opposite answer: plain addition doesn't satisfy it.

Complement да - introducing what is said, thought, wanted or believed, as in Желим да дођеш на моју прославу. from the B1 lesson on complex sentences - as a rule takes no comma of its own before it: Мислим да је то тачно. Кажем ти да не бринеш. The complement clause isn't inserted or displaced; it's the verb's own object, filling the grammatical slot the verb requires. A comma that closes an inserted word right before да, as in Занимљиво је, међутим, да…, belongs to the insertion, not to да. A да-clause that is not a complement (purpose, result, consequence, as with да би) is a separate case and is judged on its own.

Јер (because) is the clearest case where the writer genuinely decides, since the same word covers two different relationships. A tightly bound cause, the ordinary reason for the main clause's action, takes no comma: Остао је код куће јер је био болестан. (He stayed home because he was sick.) - the cause is part of the single, unified event. An afterthought explanation, added to justify or comment on a claim already made, takes one: Он ће сигурно успети, јер је увек био вредан. (He'll surely succeed - because he's always been hard-working.) - here јер introduces the writer's own justification, not an event's grammatical cause, and the comma marks it as an added-on comment. The choice is semantic, not lexical: ask what the јер-clause is doing, not which word it is.

One shared convention: the decimal comma

Numeral convention: Serbian writes decimal numbers with a comma, as in 3,14.