What are comma splices? I asked myself numerous times last week, looking furtively over my shoulder and hurrying away from suddenly menacing crowds of people. You never can tell which ones are elitists. Until they start frothing at the mouth.
"Advanced" Composition, English 374 brought out the worst in all of us. I might have been pounding the desk and spraying spittle along with the rest of 'em if I'd just known exactly what comma splices are. I'm a bit of a purist myself. In any event, one thing was clear. This was no trifling matter. I had to find out about comma splices. If looks can kill, then words must slaughter, and the kind of outrage I was witnessing included whole armies of words. And I might've been using comma splices without knowing. For my whole life!
What are comma splices? I asked myself again, as I wrote the opening lines to this post. If I admit anything, somebody'll have my guts for garters. And then a little tungsten filament in a little lightbulb over my head went "fwoosh!" and turned all incandescent. Because Google is your friend. And I'd forgotten about my old friend for a long time.
My friend Google tells me that my fears are mostly unfounded, and that Comma splices are when a comma comes and tries to connect two independent clauses that would be just fine on their own, thank you very much, and really don't want to be associated with each other besides. What they want is a good solid period separating 'em, or at least a real buffer-type word like 'yet', or 'so'.
The thing is, some of us elitists have gotten carried away and let these independent clauses be the bosses of us, 'stead of the other way around. Julius Caesar wrote "I came, I saw, I conquered." And you'll notice nobody told him to watch his comma splices.
Julius Caesar's "I came, I saw, I conquered" is so much cooler in Latin: "Veni, vidi, vici". I like it because in Latin (I'm assuming, since Spanish has the same deal) one does not need to use the personal pronoun "I" because it is implied by the conjugation of the verb. I may be wrong, since I don't really know Latin that well, but that's what I'd figure.
ReplyDeleteIt's an excellent example of Parataxis, which is a pretty tricky technique. To learn more, consult your aforementioned friend :P. But for that reason, many find the comma splice forgivable.
The idiom "thank you very much" makes its sentence a comma splice :P.
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