Hi! I'm Professor Hitch, and today, I want to
talk to you about comma slices. In fact, that should be what
you're seeing on the screen right now. Um, a comma splice, as defined
on the paper on the screen right now, is also called a run-on.
Sometimes you may see your sentence marked as a run-on, but in fact, it's
actually a comma splice or vice versa, and this occurs when a writer has
connected two main clauses with only a comma. The main clause provides a
complete thought, so the reader should not find a wimpy
comma struggling to join the two powerful clauses. This is
the error, in effect, right here. The main clause,
comma, the main clause, but here's an example of what it looks like on a
practical basis. Fanning the slice of pizza with a napkin,
Jolene waited for it to cool, she had already burned the roof of her mouth
with the fried cheese sticks. That's a problem, there's too much
information going on. Um, but how do I know that? Well, the first
thing I do is I identify these subjects, right? So, if I need to
find a main clause. A main clause is the: subject, verb, and
idea. So, I identify the subject,
start making some comments subject and i see another one over here.
Subject.
I see a verb, see a large verb phrase,
okay.
Some of you who are watching me do this video might wonder why I completely
skipped this. Um, this is a
like a modifying clause. It's modifying "jolene waited for it to cool" How did she do that? How did she wait? Well she did it
fanning the slice of pizza with a napkin. It's not a complete thought by itself.
However, jolene waited, subject verb, for it to cool, complete thought.
She had already burned, subject, verb, the roof of her mouth with the fried
cheese sticks, that's another complete thought.
That makes this whole thing ... let's see, mark it up a little more.
That makes this whole thing one main clause,
and that makes this another main clause... "So, why is this even a problem?" Some of
you might be looking at this and saying, Well, it's just,
the grammar is, like, mostly fine, other than this comma splice thing, what's the
issue here?" Well, the issue is that the comma isn't
telling a complete story. Fanning the slice of pizza with a napkin
jolene waited for it to cool because she already burned the roof of
her mouth. So watch what happens when I add
different conjunctions into the mix here is, perhaps, this isn't even a conjunction,
but this is perhaps the most obvious way of reading the sentence:
She's waiting for it to cool fanning it with her napkin
because she already burned the roof of her mouth.
Not a conjunction, but like, actually, that makes sense. That's how most of us are
reading it, but what happens when I use fanboys and
I decide I'm gonna add, maybe, like, a "so". Well, that doesn't quite
make sense, but it does change the meaning from "because",
"and" has a slightly different meaning, "but" has a slightly different meaning um,
and while i'm going through this fast I guess the point that i'm trying to make
is this: when you only have the comma, it doesn't
actually tell you how those ideas are connected,
and that's what makes it wrong, not to have the comma conjunction there,
or as you'll see in a moment, one of the other fixes available
to comma splices. So, with that in mind, that a comma splice is a main clause
comma main clause,
how do you fix them? Well, the first thing you can do
is add a period, as was done here, and then capitalize the next letter,
essentially starting a new sentence, you can add a comma and a coordinating
conjunction, so because it's not a conjunction before is
that's the first part of fanboys and that would fix what's going on here.
You can add a semicolon, and a semicolon
would be appropriate here.You use semicolons to
connect main clauses together, and, then finally, you do some kind of
subordination, a subordinate conjunction, something like
she waited for it to cool since she had already burned the roof
with her mouth. Essentially, what all these four
suggestions have in common is that you fix the sentence by clarifying the
connection. In the case of a period, you're saying
there is no connection, stop reading into my sentences,
with a comma conjunction comma conjunction,
or with a semicolon, you're saying here is a little more information
about how my sentence is connected. These are four ways you can fix a comma
splice, all are equally valid. It simply depends on
the nature of your sentence. So, to review, a comma splice is main
clause comma main clause, I
personally identify comma splices most quickly
by looking for the comma in a sentence, checking to see if there's a main clause
after comma, subject, comma subject, verb.
Once I've confirmed there's a comma -subject-verb, then I go back
and I look for yet another subject verb combination. If I found two in a row, then
I found myself a main clause comma main clause, aka
comma splice. There are four ways to fix this: breaking
up the sentence with a period, adding a coordinating conjunction, adding
a semicolon, or adding a subordinate conjunction,
and there you go! We are at the end of this review for what is a common splice!
I know I went through that pretty fast, but hopefully if you're able to review
this, maybe more than once, you should start to get
the gist of what you're looking for and how to
fix it. So, good luck!