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User:W guice/Stop comma splicing!

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Death to "however"

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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.


This makes Wikipedia look like it was written by a bunch of bickering 14-year-olds.[3]


It should be eliminated with profound prejudice.

Wall of shame: examples from articles

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Notes/refs

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  1. ^ a b As of this revision.
  2. ^ 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.
  3. ^ While for large parts of the site this might actually be true, it still doesn't mean it has to actually look that way.
  4. ^ As of this revision.