4 ms·
Just to aid people who are interesting in looking this sort of thing up, the fourth comma in the original is an example of a "comma splice", where the comma is
by bshimmin 8y ago
Just to aid people who are interesting in looking this sort of thing up, the fourth comma in the original is an example of a "comma splice", where the comma is too weak to join the two independent clauses. You can solve a comma splice by either making the two independent clauses into separate sentences, joining them with a stronger piece of punctuation (like a semicolon, colon, or a dash), or by using a conjunction like "and".
- DFHippie 8y agoBritish English seems to be more forgiving about comma splices than American English. One certainly sees them much more frequently in British English.
- bshimmin 8y agoI suspect it may be more the case that many people under 40 in the UK weren't really taught much at all in the way of grammar, and even people who have involuntarily picked up fairly decent grammatical skills still struggle with comma splices, which are, admittedly, quite a subtle sort of error whose detection is predicated by a full mastery of the purposes of the various punctuation marks and an understanding of clauses.