Consider these sentences:
- I am your technical consultant, you can contact me for any problem you encounter with the system.
- Margo is in the conference room, she is checking the technology for her presentation tomorrow.
- Please do not sign out during a break, doing so will make it harder for you to return to the program.
- Thanks for your help, we will use your guidance throughout the project.
Grammatical purists would call all four examples comma splices, the technical error of substituting a period with a comma to separate two sentences. Yet four strong writers wrote them to me in emails that were otherwise flawless in complying with standard English rules. I am sure they were aware of the miscue, but they might have written them for various reasons, including variety in sentence composition, rebellion against stringent grammar rules, or carelessness amid volumes of writing tasks.
The speed required of workers who need to process hundreds of emails a day has undoubtedly contributed to the rise of comma splices. For this reason, it is not easy to say any longer that comma splices are mistakes.
