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Comma Splices and Sentence Fragments


In practice, good writers often use comma splices, sentence fragments, and strange stuff. Students seldom get permission to. (In fact, in order to claim the right to use sentence fragments and comma splices, students must be able to recognize them and demonstrate that they're using them on purpose.

  1. John ate the barbells because he had a plastic deficiency.
    [Comma splice: John ate the barbells, he had a plastic deficiency.] [Sentence Fragment: John ate the barbells. Because he had a plastic deficiency.]

  2. While there were no daily fish rations in the office, Probst gave everyone halibut steaks on Thursdays.
    [Comma splice: There were no daily fish rations in the office, Probst gave everyone halibut steaks on Thursdays.]

    [Sentence Fragment: While there were no daily fish rations in the office. Probst gave everyone halibut steaks on Thursdays.]

  3. Being the practical sort of poet that he was, Standish wrote love verses to Martha in exchange for boiled halibut on a plate.
    [Comma Splice: Standish was a practical sort of poet, he wrote love verses to Martha in exchange for boiled halibut on a plate.] [Sentence Fragment: Being the practical sort of poet that he was. Standish wrote love verses to Martha in exchange for boiled halibut on a plate.]

  4. Rhinehardt's idea resembles ideas that were common in the 1920s, when people got upset because they didn't have enough fish to keep their arteries open.
    [Comma Splice: Rhinehardt's idea resembles ideas that were common in the 1920s, people got upset because they didn't have enough fish to keep their arteries open.]

    [Sentence Fragment: Rhinehardt's idea resembles ideas that were common in the 1920s. When people got upset because they didn't have enough fish to keep their arteries open.]

    [Sentence Fragment: Rhinehardt's idea resembles ideas that were common in the 1920s when people got upset. Because they didn't have enough fish to keep their arteries open.]

Note: Students who use a lot of sentence fragments and comma splices often want commas to do the work of either semicolons, colons, or dashes. Sometimes, of course, they're just writing like Jack Kerouac, who tells us:

No periods separating sentence-structures already arbitrarily riddled by false colons and timid usually needless commas--but the vigorous space dash separating rhetorical breathing (as jazz musician drawing breath between outblown phrases)--"measured pauses which are the essentials of our speech"--"divisions of the sounds we hear"--"time and how to note it down." [He's quoting William Carlos Williams here, he says.]

or they're writing in the spirit of Gertrude Stein, who tells us:

Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle. So then the order is that a white way of being round is something suggesting a pin and is it disappointing, it is not, it is so rudimentary to be analysed and see a fine substance strangely, it is so earnest to have a green point not to red but to point again. ["Tender Buttons"]

[All that's fine, as long as you don't care to say anything or don't intend to have any readers.]


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