a natural pause that occurs or that should be made after every word (except, of course, the last word) not followed by any punctuation mark while reading a text.
In the sentence 'We are human beings', a semi-comma occurs three times. Symbolically, it can be written as 'We*are*human*beings.', where '* (asterisk)' would represent 'semi-comma'.
by uttam maharjan November 12, 2010