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