Ghostly Grammar: Comma Splices and How to Avoid Them

The easiest way to get on your editor’s bad side

Comma splices. One of the most-common grammar errors of writers at all levels. They sound like a some sort of aggressive act, some sort of aggravated assault performed with a comma.

And they are! They’re an assault on the very structure of English! How dare you weld those two sentences together haphazardly with a comma! What, were you born illiterate? Did nobody ever tell you how grammar works?

Okay, they’re not that severe, not even by half.

In fact, unless you’ve been in a high-level writing or grammar class before, it’s pretty unlikely that you’ve even heard of a comma splice. Even then, it’s a bad habit of writers of all skills to splice sentences together with a comma. If you don’t know what’s wrong with that, you’re probably wondering why your editor has deleted half of the commas in your manuscript.

Comma Splices: An Overview

A comma splice is simply an unnecessary comma that splices together two complete thoughts. While these complete thoughts can be conjoined in a number of ways (see below), using a comma splice instead is not a valid way to do it. For example, the extremely common error:

The house was haunted, I had never seen so many ghosts.

Seem familiar? You’ve probably written hundreds of these sentences without even realizing it was an error. You’ve probably even read books with this construction, under view of a careless editor.

I’m a sinner when it comes to long, sprawling sentences. My sentences often have more clauses than the average paragraph should, and would look like a horrifying abomination if one were to try to diagram them. If you’re particularly prone to comma splices, this may be the issue.

That being said, if you’re splicing many sentences into one, you you’re definitely in need of a comma-ectomy. Here’s some of the many ways restructure your sentences.

The Host of Ways to Fix a Comma splice

Use a Period, Already!

This is something I scream at myself constantly while editing my own work. Just let the sentence end. Just put a full stop. You don’t need to let every sentence span six lines, in a haphazard mess of clauses and comma splices.

You are not an 18th-century novelist, weaving every single word into page-long sentences. You are allowed to end the sentence. Not every sentence needs to be a poem or a thesis statement. Just let the thought be the thought, and go about your day.

Conjunctions

I’m not certain as to why, but we seem to be avoiding conjunctions altogether in quite a bit of modern writing. Perhaps it’s that old (incredibly incorrect, no matter how many primary-school teachers claim it) idea that sentences can’t start with a conjunction seeping into other factors of writing?

Perhaps authors are concerned about longer sentences, and feel that if they omit their conjunctions, somehow that will make it seem that the sentence isn’t as long as it actually is.

In most cases, you can fix a comma splice with a simple conjunction. Many times what authors are intending to do is subordination, or coordination, but they’ve simply omitted the conjunction. Consider the following example:

I was a man on a mission, I had everything I needed, I had packed my bags, I was on my way to meet grandma.

Goodness, that’s a lot of sentences in that sentence! Notice that the subject “I” is restated in every single part of this. If we decide to use coordinating conjunctions, and split it into two sentences, we could easily edit this down as:

I was a man on a mission, and had everything I needed, so I packed my bags and was on my way to meet grandma.

This is a solution that solves the grammar sins. Personally, I still find this a bit wordier than I’d like, so I’d even split the two sentences (Rule 1: use a period already) to make it far easier to read:

I was a man on a mission, and had everything I needed. I had packed my bags and was on my way to meet grandma.

This is What The Semicolon was MADE For

I have a friend to introduce you to. Many writers forsake him, in favor of other punctuation. By using a comma splice, you’ve done exactly that. This function of combining two complete thoughts was someone else’s job, and you’ve completely forgotten him, putting a simple comma in its place. You’ve forgotten the semicolon.

Functionally, a semicolon does exactly the same thing as a comma splice, with the difference being that it is actually grammatically correct. For situations that require two complete sentences to be continuous, the semicolon is your tool.

I was on my way to the store, it on the way to grandma’s house.

These two sentences are related, and would benefit from being joined together. However, as it stands, this is an error. You could use a subordinating conjunction, such as “because” in this situation, but you don’t have to, necessarily.

Instead, simply:

I was on my way to the store; it was on the way to grandma’s house.

Simple, elegant, clean: the semicolon is your friend. It has very few jobs, but but it does them well. Use it wisely.