Today I’m going to talk about one of my pet peeves. I don’t know why comma splices bother me so much, but they do. When I see a traditionally-published book with multiple comma splices, I tend to think worse of the publisher. (Sorry.) One of the things editors or proofreaders should do is look for comma errors, right? (Please tell me I’m right!)

Okay, so what’s a comma splice? The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University has a good explanation. Basically, it’s when two independent clauses are linked by only a comma. What if you don’t remember what an “independent clause” is? No worries: the OWL covers that, too! In simple terms, an independent clause can stand on its own as a complete sentence.

There are specific rules for how to combine two complete, individual sentences. If you struggle with this, don’t be embarrassed. You’re in good company! In my experience, lots of writers don’t know these rules.

Here’s an example of a comma splice: “The dog was hungry, its owner forgot to feed it.“

Why is that a comma splice? Because “The dog was hungry” and “its owner forgot to feed it” can both stand on their own as separate sentences. A comma is not “strong” enough to link two separate sentences.

One of the ways to fix that comma splice is to break the sentence up: “The dog was hungry. Its owner forgot to feed it.” That’s grammatically correct. If you use a lot of short sentences like that, some people may consider the writing to be “choppy,” but that’s a style issue.

There are other options to fix that problem, though. Perhaps the easiest is to use a conjunction: “The dog was hungry because its owner forgot to feed it.“

Some conjunctions need a comma, too. As I tell my students, a comma and a conjunction is “stronger” than a comma alone.

“The dog was hungry, and its owner forgot to feed it.”

Sometime important to notice about the above examples is that they don’t mean the same thing. How you combine two clauses can change the meaning of the sentence.

Another way to fix a comma splice is to use a different punctuation mark. Some punctuation marks are “stronger” than commas and can combine two independent clauses without the use of a conjunction. This includes the dreaded semicolon, which gets a lot of hate. Personally, I love semicolons. I think they’re elegant. But some editors disagree, so be cautious in using them!

Here’s an example of semicolon use from one of my manuscripts:

Lord Inglewhite would have made an excellent husband; she was certain of that.

“Lord Inglewhite would have made an excellent husband” is a complete sentence. So is “She was certain of that.” Therefore, joining the two clauses with a comma alone would be ungrammatical, though that error is very common.

Lord Inglewhite would have made an excellent husband, she was certain of that.

That’s a comma splice. Similarly, it would be ungrammatical to remove the semicolon and replace it with nothing, like this:

Lord Inglewhite would have made an excellent husband she was certain of that.

That’s a run-on sentence.

As usual, there’s more than one way to fix that problem. For instance, you could reword the sentence to make it simpler:

She was certain that Lord Inglewhite would have made an excellent husband.

Alternatively, you could reword the whole thing to avoid the use of “was.”

She knew Lord Inglewhite would have made an excellent husband.

Or break it into two seperate sentences:

Lord Inglewhite would have made an excellent husband. She was certain of that.

For this example, breaking the sentence into two works quite well. If I wanted to remove the semicolon, that’s probably how I’d punctuate it. Again, though, that’s a matter of taste.

By the way, the character in question in this example is absolutely right: Lord Inglewhite IS good husband material! He’s a sweet, soft cinnamon roll, and I can’t wait to introduce him to readers!