Unbreakable Grammar Rule #1: The Comma Splice

What is a Comma Splice?

A comma splice is the use of a comma to join two independent clauses. For example:
It is nearly half past five, we cannot reach town before dark.

How to Fix a Comma Splice

1. Change the comma to a semicolon, dash, or colon:

  • It is nearly half past five; we cannot reach town before dark.
  • It is nearly half past five—we cannot reach town before dark.
  • We cannot reach town before dark: it is nearly half past five.

2. Write the two clauses as two separate sentences:

  • It is nearly half past five. We cannot reach town before dark.

3. Insert a coordinating conjunction following the comma:

  • It is nearly half past five, and we cannot reach town before dark.
  • It is nearly half past five, so we cannot reach town before dark.

4. Make one clause dependent on the other:

  • Because it is nearly half past five, we cannot reach town before dark.

5. Use a semicolon plus a conjunctive adverb:

  • It is nearly half past five; hence, we cannot reach town before dark.

Further Resources

/by

Radical Doctor Seuss

In its series about Banned Books, the New York Public Library is highlighting the subversive work of Dr. Seuss:

Dr. Seuss himself admitted that as an author he was “subversive as hell,” and did not want to write stories about modeling good behavior for children. His books encouraged standing up to authority while comically illustrating the consequences of fear-based thinking—bold ideas that have made a Grinch out of those opposed to instilling such attitudes in children.

/by

This Is Your Author on PEDs

Brian Michael Murphy positions the controversy over performance-enhancing drugs in the context of great literature:

All of my writing heroes used PEDs. I still respect them; I would still shake their hands; I would never boo them as they took the podium to read, just returned from a stint in rehab or a drunk tank. I’m thinking of Allen Ginsburg’s acid. Baudelaire’s absinthe. Alice Walker’s magic mushrooms. Graham Greene’s Benzedrine. Legend has it that Gabriel García Márquez smoked up to 10 packs of cigarettes a day while holed up in his writing room for a year and a half like José Arcadio Buendía with his astrolabe and crucible. I once read that Balzac drank 50 cups of coffee daily and died of heart failure; another account said his personal record was 200 cups in a day, and that he died of a perforated ulcer.

/by

White Power Takeover in North Dakota

The New York Times is reporting that a white supremacist named Paul Craig Cobb has been buying property in a tiny North Dakota town with the purpose of turning it into a white supremacist enclave:

Their new neighbor, they thought, was just another person looking to get closer to the lucrative oil fields in western North Dakota known as the Bakken.

But all that changed last week.

The Southern Poverty Law Center and The Bismarck Tribune revealed that the man, Paul Craig Cobb, 61, has been buying up property in this town of 24 people in an effort to transform it into a colony for white supremacists.

In the past two years, Mr. Cobb, a longtime proselytizer for white supremacy who is wanted in Canada on charges of promoting hatred, has bought a dozen plots of land in Leith (pronounced Leeth) and has sold or transferred ownership of some of them to a couple of like-minded white nationalists.

 

/by

Is Forced Fatherhood Fair?

Laurie Shrage outlines the argument:

The political philosopher Elizabeth Brake has argued that our policies should give men who accidentally impregnate a woman more options, and that feminists should oppose policies that make fatherhood compulsory. In a 2005 article in the Journal of Applied Philosophy she wrote, “if women’s partial responsibility for pregnancy does not obligate them to support a fetus, then men’s partial responsibility for pregnancy does not obligate them to support a resulting child.” At most, according to Brake, men should be responsible for helping with the medical expenses and other costs of a pregnancy for which they are partly responsible.

/by