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 -----
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