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Comma Splice
In vocal communication I tend to use rough and coarse language; that makes it rather fascinating that I’m anal about my written language. Except for prepositions. I don’t give a crap about ‘em. And spelling. I never use spell checkers; if I don’t know how to spell a word, I’m prepared to live with the shame. In general, I suppose that I’m not really anal about my written language per se - I’m anal about my grammar.
One thing that constantly fascinates me is the grammar splice errors that pop up everywhere. Literally everywhere: newspapers, literature, web pages, reports… I’ve seen it in a web comic just now. I saw it in a Pratchett book yesterday. It doesn’t matter whether it’s in Swedish or English or German – people seem to have a fetish for abusing the poor old comma in strange and horrible ways. It’s like people have collectively decided that comma is the weird fat kid who should get beaten up every recess. You know, that kid who spends all his time at the library; people are stupid and mean and he doesn’t understand them, but books are kind and helpful and comforting. Oh, the horrors poor comma-boy has seen! He has seen the hearts of children, and they are black as the night.
Anyway, I mentioned the term comma splice, but I didn’t know about it until five minutes ago. I had planned to write a post about this horrible comma misuse, and decided to check the comma Wikipedia page before I embarked on this glorious task; that’s where I found that some kind soul had placed a link to the aforementioned comma splice definition page. Okay, I think I’ve mentioned comma splice about as many times as I can without explaining what it is: comma splice is when two independent clauses are joined without a binding word in between them.
Here’s an example:
John was tired, he wanted to go home.
I assume that you immediately see what the problem is with the sentence above, but just in case I’d better elaborate a bit. “John was tired” is an independent clause. It’s a perfectly correct sentence on its own; it has a subject, a predicate and an adverb as well. “He wanted to go home” is also an independent clause; it can stand on its own. These two can never be joined by just a comma! All that’s needed to correct this is to add a single conjunction:
John was tired and he wanted to go home.
Even a semicolon would make things better:
John was tired; he wanted to go home.
I get so frustrated when people make this mistake. I really don’t see why. Spelling mistakes I can understand. Not knowing the difference between an adverb and an adjective is fine. Not caring the least about grammar is also fine. But this jumps out at you (well, at me at least): it’s so fundamentally incorrect! It’s not even colloquial – it’s just plain wrong. In every language known to man. And by man I mean me. Which means just a measly few languages. But still.
For the observant: yes, I just wrote an incomplete sentence. See, I’m not a grammar nazi – it’s just this comma splice that annoys me to no end.