Whats a comma splice and whats wrong with it?
I used to watch my father, years ago, take a broken tape from our reel-to-reel tape recorder and use clear tape to splice the ends together. In a comma splice, the writer uses a comma to splice two sentences together. While the splice worked on our old tape recorder, it doesn’t work in writing. Examples of comma splices (all incorrect): Of course I got lost, I’ve never been this way before. He opened the door slowly, he felt that danger waited on the other side. Tell me that story again, I forget how it ends. How are they supposed to know the rules, they can’t read. In each example you see a complete sentence on each side of the comma. In English we can’t do that. Sorry. We have to (1) make them into two separate sentences or (2) join them with a conjunction (such as and, or, but, because) or (3) use other punctuation. Here are some ways to fix the above comma splices: Of course I got lost! I’ve never been this way before. He opened the door slowly, because he felt that danger waited o
