diff --git a/codex/wiki.py b/codex/wiki.py
index e66024f..7a0ec8b 100644
--- a/codex/wiki.py
+++ b/codex/wiki.py
@@ -273,7 +273,13 @@ _STOPWORDS: frozenset[str] = frozenset(
     }
 )
 
-_SENTENCE_SPLIT_RE = re.compile(r"[.!?]")
+# Split on sentence-ending punctuation only when followed by whitespace/end, so a
+# decimal like "1.5" does not create a spurious sentence boundary (audit R-1).
+_SENTENCE_SPLIT_RE = re.compile(r"[.!?]+(?=\s|$)")
+
+# Punctuation stripped from token edges before grounding comparison — sentence/
+# clause marks and quotes, NOT math delimiters like ()=+ (audit R-1).
+_EDGE_PUNCT = ".,;:!?\"'"
 
 
 def _last_sentence(text: str) -> str:
@@ -292,8 +298,16 @@ def _last_sentence(text: str) -> str:
 
 
 def _content_words(text: str) -> list[str]:
-    """Return lowercased tokens with stopwords removed."""
-    return [w for w in text.lower().split() if w not in _STOPWORDS]
+    """Return lowercased content tokens, edge-punctuation-stripped, stopwords removed.
+
+    Stripping leading/trailing sentence punctuation makes grounding robust to
+    surface variation ("volume," vs "volume") so a faithful paraphrase is not
+    marked ungrounded over a comma (audit R-1). Math delimiters (``()=+``) are
+    preserved. Claim and chunk tokens are normalised identically, so matching
+    stays consistent.
+    """
+    tokens = (w.strip(_EDGE_PUNCT) for w in text.lower().split())
+    return [w for w in tokens if w and w not in _STOPWORDS]
 
 
 def _run_grounding_guard(
diff --git a/tests/wiki/test_compile.py b/tests/wiki/test_compile.py
index 632905c..c0db957 100644
--- a/tests/wiki/test_compile.py
+++ b/tests/wiki/test_compile.py
@@ -213,6 +213,23 @@ def test_grounding_guard_last_sentence_grounded_earlier_hallucination_ignored()
     )
 
 
+def test_grounding_guard_robust_to_trailing_comma() -> None:
+    """A faithful 5-word claim grounds despite a trailing comma (audit R-1).
+
+    The chunk says "... the volume function V0 is strictly concave on the angle
+    domain." Before edge-punctuation stripping, the claim token "concave," != the
+    chunk token "concave", so the only content-5-gram failed to match and the
+    claim was wrongly marked ungrounded.
+    """
+    claim = Claim(
+        text="the volume function V0 is strictly concave,",
+        bibkey="Springborn2008",
+        locator="chunk 16",
+    )
+    result = _run_grounding_guard([claim], FIXTURE_CHUNKS)
+    assert result[0].grounded is True
+
+
 # ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 # _inject_cross_refs
 # ---------------------------------------------------------------------------