(It is hard to praise this book enough.) Sure enough, the comma splice was once part of the best English usage:Īs to the old one, I knew not what to do with him, he was so fierce I durst not go into the pit to him - (Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, 1719) And I would notice my English teacher's injunction gave me a terror-loathing of comma splices that has never left me.īut, as ever, there are facts to be had, and in cases like this, the go-to reference is the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage. ![]() The Economist doesn't have a ruling on comma splices in the style book, but I don't recall ever having seen one in the newspaper. (She applied the same rule for fragments and run-on sentences.) My colleague, however, says it's a matter of style. My senior English teacher marked down any paper with even a single comma splice by two letter grades, so that an otherwise perfect A paper would receive a C. Ashbird, another commenter, was taught as I was: the comma-splice is an error. Saying "Maybe X, maybe Y" suggests that the author doesn't want to imply that X and Y are unrelated, but doesn't want to imply any particular relationship between them either.That's two independent clauses joined only by a comma, or a comma splice, sometimes called a "comma fault". ![]() Saying "Maybe X maybe Y" would have the opposite problem, suggesting that X and Y should be considered independent propositions. would all have inappropriate implications about how the truth of X and the truth of Y are related. In some cases, it's possible that "Maybe X or maybe Y", "Maybe X and maybe Y", "Maybe X, but maybe Y", etc. In many cases it is appropriate to use a coordinating conjunction along with "maybe", but different coordinating conjunctions imply different relationships between the things being joined. The construct with "maybe" may be extended to an arbitrary number of items-not just two-and generally requires that items be separated by commas and that "maybe" be included before each. ![]() The term "maybe" can and often does serve as an adverb, but in the structure "Maybe X, maybe Y" the uses of "maybe" behave as conjunctions similar to "either" and "or" in the construct "either X or Y". (I can't guarantee that an English teacher wouldn't mark it with a red pen, though.) I'd call it the asyndetic coordination of two clauses that are similar in structure and related in meaning. Maybe he told her everything, maybe he'd been watching me all this time. When it doesn't work, they tend to call it a comma splice.īut that's more of a judgment call than anything, because there's no strict technical definition that separates one from the other. ![]() When it works, people tend to call it asyndeton. All three clauses are similar in structure and are related in meaning. For example:Īlthough this has no explicit coordinator, this famous example has nonetheless been written as a single sentence. Writers tend to do this when they're closely related in meaning or structure. Sentences can sometimes be joined without an explicit coordinator like and or or. In other words, they call this sort of thing a "comma splice" if they consider it an error. Generally, people use the term when they think a pair of independent clauses that are joined without a coordinator would be better written as separate sentences. "Comma splice" isn't a term with a strict definition.
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