At 05:43 AM 6/28/2001, Ed Vavra wrote:
>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
comma 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