The change highlights an interesting point about punctuation and writing in general that sometimes comes up. Scott’s writing has improved over the last three years, he reworked the book, and it probably had more extensive editing from Crown than it did with his initial small publisher. You, Sir, Are no Cormac McCarthyįinally, another thing that’s interesting is that the example sentences I used aren’t in Ancestor anymore. So, I hope you get it! Commas aren’t meant to join main clauses all by themselves to force them into that role is to perpetrate a comma splice. The semicolon works because the two clauses are related: They were getting it he had them.Īnd in this case we can add a coordinating conjunction to fix the problem too: They were getting it, and he had them. The period definitely works: They were getting it. (See Episode 122: Is “Have Got” Acceptable English?) So in the comma splice repair kit, we’ve got periods, semicolons, and coordinating conjunctions. This one is from page 29, where he’s explaining how one of the characters lured in investors for his evil plan. Let’s take one more of Scott’s mangled sentences and see if we can fix it! It changes the meaning to say Sara obviously named that one, and she was a sucker for those old “Happy Days” reruns.īut if I go back to the other sentence with a comma splice-Squiggly ran to the forest, Aardvark chased the peeves-you can see that it makes sense to connect those two sentences with a coordinating conjunction and a comma. It doesn’t work with the example sentence from Ancestor because it doesn’t make any sense to add an “and” or any of the other coordinating conjunctions. Sometimes, you can also fix a comma splice by adding a coordinating conjunction. How to Use Coordinating Conjunctions to Fix a Comma Splice You can think of a semicolon as a “sentence splicer” because its job is to splice complete sentences together. (Want more? See Episode 189, How to Use Semicolons.) He’s saying that it’s obvious that Sara named the cow because she liked “Happy Days” reruns and the cow is named after a “Happy Days” character. The semicolon makes sense because the second clause expands on the reasoning of the first clause. ![]() Sara obviously named that one she was a sucker for those old “Happy Days” reruns. If the two sentences are closely related to each other, as they are in the sentence from Ancestor, you can use a semicolon to connect them without a coordinating conjunction. ![]() How to Use a Semicolon to Fix a Comma Splice It’s a period’s job to separate complete sentences. ![]() She was a sucker for those old “Happy Days” reruns. Because the two clauses are complete sentences, you can treat them that way and use a period where you had a comma. The good news is that it’s easy to fix a comma splice once you’re aware of the problem. It’s easy to see in that example why the error is called a comma splice: it’s because the comma is used to splice together two complete sentences when that isn’t the function of a comma.Ĭommas aren’t meant to join main clauses all by themselves to force them into that role is to perpetrate a comma splice. Sara obviously named that one, she was a sucker for those old “Happy Days” reruns. Here’s an example from page 114 of the original Ancestor book, where one of the characters is talking about a cow named Fonzie: (wrong) What Is a Comma Splice?Ĭomma splices seem to be Scott Sigler’s biggest problem. Squiggly ran to the forest, Aardvark chased the peeves. If you just put a comma between them, that’s an error called a comma splice or a comma fault: ![]() To join them with a comma, you need the word “and” or some other coordinating conjunction. Squiggly ran to the forest is a complete sentence, and Aardvark chased the peeves is also a complete sentence. Squiggly ran to the forest, and Aardvark chased the peeves.
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