Improving Style Through Syntax, Part 4: Avoiding—No, Managing—the Comma Splice

A comma splice uses a comma without a connecting word to join two independent clauses. Most style guidebooks consider it an error, including The Basics: A Rhetoric and Handbook, fourth edition, by Santi V. Buscemi, Albert H. Nicolai, and Richard Strugala (page 368); English Composition and Grammar: Complete Course, benchmark edition, by John E, Warriner (page 342); and Random House Handbook, sixth edition by Frederick Crews (page 400).

Yet we see comma splices in so many sources that rhetoricians consider to be standards of literary excellence. To avoid overstating the case, I'll give just two of many examples:

From "Closed" in the March 21, 2020 issue of The Economist  (page 9): 

Mitigation curbs the pandemic, suppression aims to stop it in its tracks.

Inflexible grammarians would assert that the proper way to separate those two independent clauses is not by a comma but by a period or a semicolon, or to join them by following the comma with but. Yet the two ideas flow well while maintaining clarity with the "improper" comma.

From William Styron's essay "A Second Flowering" in This Quiet Dust and Other Writings (page 86):

These are not thrice-told tales, they seem by now to be so numbingly familiar as to be almost personal—tedious old gossip having to do with some fondly regarded but too often outrageous kinfolk.

I would be quick to agree with those who would prefer a period instead of a comma after tales. Nevertheless, Styron's choice of the comma is innocuous; in fact, it helps move along his point a bit quicker.

If you have taken one of my classes in which I explained the comma splice as a technical mistake, you might find me hypocritical to defend the two examples of comma splices here. I could arrogantly say that once you write as well as the editors of The Economist or William Styron, you could do what you want—but I won't. All I'll say is consider alternatives when choosing a comma splice. Below are four examples of writing I have reviewed where the alternatives are better than the comma splices.

1. Thank you for your help, I greatly appreciate it. 

This is a redundancy. The improved alternative is either Thank you for your help or I greatly appreciate your help.

2. I'll send the package today, you should receive it by Monday.

While not a redundancy, this comma splice fails to get to the point. The improved alternative is either You should receive my package by Monday or The package I'll send today should arrive by Monday.

3. Do you teach presentation skills, my team could use such training.

Since when did the question mark fall out of favor? I frequently see such examples in email. The improved alternative is Do you teach presentation skills? My team could use such training. Or Can you teach presentation skills to my team?

4. You might find discrepancies, include them in your report.

This comma splice is too process-oriented and not results-oriented. An improved alternative is either If you find discrepancies, include them in your report or Include in your report any discrepancies.

But if a comma splice seems like a strong choice for impact or variety, then use it, and use it sparingly.

***

Read previous posts in this series:
Part 1: Grouping and Dropping Prepositional Phrases
Part 2: Dropping Pronouns for Clarity
Part 3: Dropping Pronouns for Conciseness

Improving Style Through Syntax, Part 3: Dropping Pronouns for Conciseness

Serious writers claim we can always drop the pronouns who, which, and that. Actually, we can't. We surely want to drop those words for conciseness, but we need to think twice before doing so.

Who (for people)
In the next sentences, we can drop who without altering the meaning of the sentence:

Wordy: Ana Diaz, who is the CEO, will address the staff. (10 words)
Concise: CEO Ana Diaz will address the staff. (7 words)

Wordy: Ana Diaz is the executive who is in charge. (9 words) Concise: Ana Diaz is the executive in charge. (7 words)

But dropping who in the next sentence would destroy its grammatical soundness:

Correct: Who will be the executive in charge?
Incorrect: Will be the executive in charge?

And in this next sentence, dropping who would change the meaning: 

Who is the executive in charge? (This means one is asking for the executive in charge.)
Is the executive in charge? (This mean one is asking whether the executive is in charge.)

Which (for places, things, types, concepts)
Like who, which is often expendable, but not always. In this next sentence, which is unnecessary: 

Wordy: The committee, which the CEO appointed, will meet tomorrow. (9 words)
Concise: The CEO-appointed committee will meet tomorrow. (6 words, as hyphenated words count as one)

However, the sentence below shows that dropping which would create a syntax problem:
Correct: I am not sure which committee the CEO appointed.
Incorrect: I am not sure committee the CEO appointed.

That (for places, things, types, concepts)
Finally, that is not different from who or which in being alternately disposable or necessary, depending on the sentence. In the next example, that is verbiage: 

Wordy: CEO Ana Diaz said that she will meet the committee. (10 words)
Concise: CEO Ana Diaz said she will meet the committee. (9 words)

In this final example, keeping that will attain clarity:

I know CEO Ana Diaz will meet the committee.

A first reading may interpret the sentence to mean I know CEO Ana Diaz when, in fact, I know something about her. Thus, we'd do better with:

I know that CEO Ana Diaz will meet the committee.

Think through whether dropping who, which, or that—or any word for that matter—maintains clarity while achieving conciseness. After all, clarity surpasses conciseness in value.

***

Read previous posts in this series:
Part 1: Grouping and Dropping Prepositional Phrases
Part 2: Dropping Pronouns for Clarity

Keeping Your Sanity in the Time of COVID-19

You can help keep the sanity of your loved ones in check during the COVID-19 pandemic by learning whatever you can about mental and emotional health at the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention and reacting appropriately to their behavioral changes. 

Take care of yourself by keeping physically distanced but socially connected. Call, video, and write people you have not heard from in a long time. Ask how they are doing. Let them know you are available to them. Stay active. Watch TV less, listen to music more, read more, pray or meditate more. Look around your home, at the vacation mementos, the family keepsakes, the family albums, the gifts and awards you've received, no matter from how long ago, and see the remarkable world you have made for yourself. You matter. 

But you can only remember the past, not live in it. So look ahead. Planet Earth has recovered from great disasters. Unless you believe COVID-19 marks the end of humanity, in which case you are wrong, then plan for the end of the virus. Do that by keeping busy with your business, professional skills, education, household chores. Be ready to get back to whatever you were doing before the quarantine. You shall return.

Improving Style Through Syntax, Part 2: Dropping Pronouns for Clarity

Pronouns stand in for nouns. They are indispensable to concise communication. Without them, we would have a lot of long-winded sentences. For instance, let's say I stood in the front of a classroom of 26 students and, looking at one of them, Frankie, I said, "I'm talking to you." Assuming all 26 students had vision and were looking at me as I spoke, the entire class would know I was speaking not to them but only to Frankie, whose name I replaced with the personal pronoun you. Now let's say I spread my vision across all the students in the room when saying "I'm talking to you." In that case, you replaces all 26 students. Imagine how inconvenient it would be for me to say, "I'm talking to Alexandria, Bonita, Celia, Donna, Eda, Frankie, Gina, Hallie, Isadora, Jill, Kalyan, Li, Mohammed, Nick, Oscar, Paul, Quincy, Ronetta, Shirley, Tina, Ursula, Vinny, Wally, Xiomara, Yu, and Zhang." That's why I always express gratitude to the language gods for inventing pronouns.

Of course, pronouns have their problems too. What if I wrote this sentence:

Vice-president Sandra Schultz told Eva Barnes that she will present the quarterly report to the Board.

We would have a hard time deciding who she is, because in the context of this sentence, she could be either woman. Yet we would know who's who if the sentence read:

Vice-president Sandra Schultz told Adam Barnes that she will present the quarterly report to the Board.

We are clear because we would know Sandra to be a woman (she) and Adam to be a man. Here is another example of an unclear  pronoun with improved edits.

Unclear: Bob said that Greg's data are reliable. He is incorrect. (Is Bob or Greg incorrect?)
Clearer: Bob showed that Greg's unreliable data are incorrect.
Clearer: Bob made an incorrect assessment by saying Greg's data are unreliable.

You can choose other ways to express the sentence, depending on what meaning you want to make. The point is that personal pronouns used carelessly can create ambiguity, so place them in their clearest context. 

***

The first part of this series: Part 1: Grouping and Dropping Prepositional Phrases

"We interrupt this program ... ": Preliminary Thoughts on COVID-19

I interrupt the WORDS ON THE LINE series, "Improving Style Through Syntax", for a far more important reflection on the coronavirus (COVID-19). My intention here is not to provide COVID-19 updates or analyses, but to take a snapshot of how the virus is affecting our psyche from the perspective of a writer.

Let's say you were born on January 4, 1995, in New York City, and you have lived there all of your life except for occasional travel. You have learned to live with some remarkable tragedies, politics aside. You were in the first grade during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, when four planes full of passengers were intentionally crashed, and the World Trade Center collapsed not far from your home, leaving nearly 3,000 people dead in their wake and $40 billion in insurance losses. You were in your senior year of high school when Hurricane Sandy hit your neighborhood on October 22, 2012, leading to nearly 300 dead and $70 billion in damage. And now, at age 25, you would have been in the workforce the past two-and-a-half years when the COVID-19 pandemic erupted as a health concern and disrupted business worldwide, likely causing thousands, if not millions, of deaths and trillions of dollars in lost revenue. As of this moment, the United States and many other nations are in a state of emergency and economies are shutting down as 145,336 cases and 5,416 deaths due to COVID-19 have been reported, with exponentially more predicted. Indeed, as a 25-year-old New Yorker, you might understandably believe that catastrophes happen once per decade, as a young man told me this week. 

Trust me: you are underestimating. Let's look at your great-grandmother, who was born was born, bred, and died in New York with a lifespan from July 4, 1900 to August 2, 1975. In her 75 years on this planet, she lived through the flu of 1918, which infected 500,000,000 (27%) and killed as many as 100,000,000 (5%) of the world population; World War I (1914-1918), which left 16,000,000 dead; World War II (1939-1945), killing 73,000,000; and some 50 famines, occurring almost annually, taking more than 125,000,000 lives.

As staggering as these numbers are, using Americans as examples smacks of historical unawareness. Those morbidity statistics pale in comparison to a man born and bred in Warsaw, Poland at the same time as your great-grandmother. He would have seen 6,000,000 of his 35,000,000 countrymen die in World War II alone (17%). If that man were a Jew, he would have been lucky to have survived the Holocaust, when 6,000,000 of 9,500,000 European Jews were executed (63%). A woman born and bred in Saigon, Vietnam, also on July 4, 1900, would have had great-great grandparents, great-grandparents, grandparents, children, and grandchildren all living in a constant state of war throughout their entire existence. 

These statistics are sobering reminders not that we are so fortunate compared to generations past (which we are), but that we should remain vigilant throughout our lives. Yes, we need an excellent military defense system, but deaths by human-made atrocities are second to acts of nature—the tsunamis, monsoons, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, fires, landslides, volcanic eruptions, droughts, famines, and, of course, viral and bacterial diseases. We also need to invest in an excellent healthcare defense system, one with enough medical professionals, ventilators, laboratories, and testing sets, and vaccinations. Global tragedies are continuous. We must be prepared. We must listen to people who know better than we do. We must realize that the planet changes every second. We must do the right thing by changing our behavior.

Improving Style Through Syntax, Part 1: Grouping and Dropping Prepositional Phrases

This post begins a 20-part series on syntax in cultivating a strong writing style. In the context of writing, as opposed to the more formal and technical study of linguistics, syntax is the arrangement of words, phrases, and clauses to make a meaningful sentence. Through this series, you will reap two benefits: improving your style, which will heighten the quality of your written messages; and learning about grammar, which will give you a deeper understanding of English. 

I will follow this series with another 20-part series on sharpening your style through diction (word choice).

***

We can often, but not always, combine consecutive prepositional phrases. Consider these four examples:

1. I will vacation in China for pleasure.
2. I went on vacation to China.
3. In the month of September, I will vacation in China.
4. I will vacation in the south of China. 

1. In the sentence I will vacation in China for pleasure, I cannot combine the two prepositional phrases to China and for pleasure. Doing so would destroy the intention of my meaning and yield these nonsensical results: 

I will vacation in pleasurable China.

I will vacation for Chinese pleasure.

2. In the sentence I went on vacation in China, I can combine the prepositional phrases on vacation and in China and still make sense, but not without changing the meaning:

I went on a Chinese vacation. 

This sentence might imply a type of vacation as opposed to a vacation in a specific place.

3. In the sentence In the month of September, I will travel to China, I have the two prepositional phrases in the month and of September, one of which I can easily drop without losing meaning:

In September, I will vacation in China.

4. In the sentence I will vacation in the south of China, I can easily group the prepositional phrases in the south and of China:

I will vacation in southern China.

Now let's look at a paragraph with many useless prepositional phrases:

At some time in the morning on Monday, Kim, the manager of the office, needs to meet with Bob, the new employee, to talk about expectations for his job. She will start in the morning by giving him a tour of the facility for him to get familiar with his work environment. After the walk-through, she will talk about the policies of the company and then provide him with a book of procedures for his job responsibilities.

We can reduce this 77-word paragraph to 47 words—a 39 percent cut— just by grouping and dropping prepositional phrases:

Sometime Monday morning, Kim, the office manager, will meet Bob, the new employee, to discuss job expectations. She will start with a facility tour to familiarize him with his work environment. Then she will discuss company policies and give him a procedural book for his job responsibilities.

Look for consecutive prepositional phrases; they often offer opportunities to edit for conciseness.