Richard, "Hippies are cool, greasers are fools." is fine: Its comma can splice because it is a listing comma (i.e.: it lists two descriptions). A listing comma is a sort of + sign in the logic of this splicing. But "It was nobody's fault, that was the thing to remember" ? I cannot come at this. No sort of logical operation happens here that warrants a splicing. These are simply two independent sentences. If O'Connor wanted to mark a special relationship of proximity here, he might have done it with a colon or even a semi-colon: 

It was nobody's fault: t/That was the thing to remember.
It was nobody's fault; that was the thing to remember.

(Joseph O'Conner must have had a lousy editor!) 

Sophie

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Richard Veit 
  To: [log in to unmask] 
  Sent: Friday, June 29, 2001 1:36 AM
  Subject: Re: A comma-splice?


  Sophie:

  I understand your argument, and the principles you state hold in most cases. There are exceptions, however. Sidney Greenbaum, in The Oxford English Grammar, writes, "Two independent clauses are occasionally juxtaposed, separated by a comma without a co-ordinator, particularly if they are short and parallel." He cites two quotations from novels. One is from Mary Gaitskill: "Hippies are cool, greasers are fools." Another is from Joseph O'Connor: "It was nobody's fault, that was the thing to remember" (1996, pp. 530-31).

  Another exception can occur when two independent clauses have a strongly implied "in spite of A, B" relationship. One often sees in print sentences punctuated like the following:

  I don't care what you say, I'm going ahead with my plans.
  It doesn't matter what they do to us, we'll always have each other.

  You can find similar examples in most style manuals.

  Dick Veit

  At 11:03 AM 6/28/2001, you wrote:

    Richard, there is a structural difference between:
     
    (i) It doesn't matter what we have in common, we will always have something to talk about. 
    and:
    (ii) No matter what you may have done, I still love you. 
     
    Sentence (ii) is structured such that a dependent sentence leads an independent one. That enables the comma.
     
    The (i) structures are two independent sentences. Even if a semantic relationship obtains between them they remain two sentences. And they are not two sentences that constitute a list. (The comma splices independent sentences only when they are each items of a list.) So there is no role for a comma between them.
     
    Sophie
     

      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From: Richard Veit 
      To: [log in to unmask] 
      Sent: Friday, June 29, 2001 12:32 AM
      Subject: Re: A comma-splice?

      It doesn't matter what we have in common, we will always have something to talk about.
      I disagree with those who say this needs to be punctuated as two separate sentences. A comma is standard practice (and can be found widely in print) for sentences like this where two clauses--despite absence of conjunction--are so obviously dependent on each other. You wouldn't find a period in "No matter what you may have done, I still love you." The clauses in the sentence in question have the same relationship. Anyone is free to state that what they would like the standard practice to be in the real world, but our job is to describe English as it is, not how we might wish it to be. Most professional editors out there would have a comma between the clauses. 

      Dick Veit
      University of North Carolina at Wilmington