I've been reading more Japanese literature, and in doing so I've come across
hiragana with something that looks like 、to the right of some characters where
ふりがな would be (keeping in mind that Japanese is written from top to bottom in
books. It's not a comma, and it seems to usually appears on hiragana in
succession.

I was thinking it was for emphasis, something like italics, but don't know
what it means for certain.

I've attached a picture to clear up any confusion as to what it looks like.
They're on the very right of the image by 「いわし」.

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8Ln3y.png)
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-02-17T13:17:16.260
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2015-06-15T15:25:47.200
2015-06-15T15:25:47.200
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question
orthography punctuation
What do dots next to Hiragana mean in literature?