User:W guice/Stop comma splicing!
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Death to "however"
[edit]Wiki defines a comma splice as:
a sentence in which two independent clauses are joined by a comma with no conjunction. For example:
- It is nearly half past five, we cannot reach town before dark.[1]
And adds:
It is usually considered an error in both British and American English.[1]
There's a good reason for this proscription: namely, that when ignored, the resulting prose is generally excruciatingly horrible.[2] On a collaborative environment like Wikipedia, what's so often missing is an over-riding editorial voice, and a common result of this is that, instead of correcting erroneous information in articles, editors just add one or (usually) all of:
- a comma splice;
- the word "however";
- an incongruous new clause that doesn't fit the sentence and entirely contradicts the information in the first part.
It should be eliminated with profound prejudice.
Wall of shame: examples from articles
[edit]| “ | Blackout! is a 1999 album by hip-hop artists Method Man & Redman. As of April 2008, it is the first and only full length release by Method Man and Redman after many collaborations, however, there is talk for a Blackout! album sequel.[4] | ” |
Notes/refs
[edit]- ^ a b As of this revision.
- ^ Yeh, so W. Somerset Maugham, Samuel Beckett and E. M. Forster did it. But are they writing for WP? Or is anyone of their calibre? No.
- ^ While for large parts of the site this might actually be true, it still doesn't mean it has to actually look that way.
- ^ As of this revision.