should be "comma + conjunction" - one alone is as bad as the other.

- ok, Colin, yeah, you out-analled me!!

Al;though, i think when the clauses are as short as in,

roses are red but violets are blue

it's pretty acceptable not to use the comma.

px

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Please excuse bad use of commas in this sentence:

Al;though, i think when the clauses are as short as in,

and stray semi colon

Thanks Colin. I'm wavering between a dash and a semi-colon. I use a fair number of dashes in place of semi-colons, but usually if it's the end of the paragraph/section. Unfortunately I've got another sentence after that one, which is why in this instance I'm leaning towards a semicolon.

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I suspect my love of commas is the reason why I use a lot of , which... in place of that (which is not preceeded by a comma). I really must stop that.

I don't always put a comma before a conjunction. Whether one's a good idea or not depends on the needs of clarity, the required emphasis and the rhythm of the sentence. In a short sentence I wouldn't use a comma if I wanted both parts to have an equal emphasis (roses are red but violets are blue), but if I wanted the second part to be emphasised I would (roses are red, but violets are blue).

The dreadfully comma spliced "sentence" I gave earlier as an example is how a lot of students write these day. It comes across as a rush of ideas that haven't been given enough thought.

There are lots of ways to join sentences together, you can use a semi-colon or a conjunction, sometimes it's just better to rewrite the sentence, relying on commas to do a job they aren't designed for isn't really a good idea.

This can be rewritten in a lot of different ways depending on what you want emphasised and whether you want a simple or more complex style.

Excellent discussion. I have to say, though, that plenty of pedants would say that unless you're writing very informally, dashes - the subject being considered - should only come in pairs or, as one might put it more correctly, parenthetically.

To get back to what was said about rapid pacing , I was trying to think of examples. I remembered that when I seventeen and working for the NHS my supervisor,a keen Ian Fleming fan, lent me the James Bond books in chronological order. They were a quick read, but I imagine the author was a stickler for punctuation and didn't go much for comma splicing. I don't have any of the books but was was wondering how he punctuated his hero's famous salutation. I'd be inclined to think, 'My name's Bond:James Bond', but that's a bit over-formal for today's tastes. Does anybody have the books to hand? Perhaps it was only in the films that he said this.

Sheila

dashes - the subject being considered - should only come in pairs

I'm sure tis is a recent fad. I've grown up seeing them used, and using them, singly, but in the past few years for some reason they've doubled up.

- NaomiM

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Come to think of it, Word has the long dash and the short dash, although the same keystroke is used. I suspect that the double dash comes from the short dash, when actually the long dash does exist if you know where to find it.

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Oops, unless, Emma, you meant pairs as in also having one on the otherside of the fragment, as per your example.

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I was talking about the growing fad for using -- double dashes.

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I use singles quite a lot in dialogue (doubles in prose) where someone drops a bomb or a clanger or an after thought in at the end of a sentence and it's left hanging by the placement of a full stop.

Being the pedant I am, I've really enjoyed this chat about punctuation, and am now going through my wip happily changing dashes for commas, and commas for other things.

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I've even found a few ... which I've used to denote conversation tailing off. Not sure what to do with those. Or with the dash used to denote conversation cut off/interrupted.
Are they allowed?

When I was at university reading English language and literature (about 300 years ago admittedly), I had a tutor who believed that that one should initially learn the rules but when it came to using them in literature they fell into two categories.

There are 'fixed' rules, the breaking of which could serve no purpose except making the writer appear to be illiterate (e.g. inappropriate use of the apostrophe); and there are 'stylistic' rules such as the issues that are being discussed here. He believed that stylistic rules should always be obeyed if breaking them would adversely affect the sense of what one is trying to communicate, but may be bent or even broken to create a particular effect.

He also believed that grammar shifts and evolves in the same way as language itself does and that if one tries to tie it down too strictly the creative development of the language will be hampered.

We live in a hurried age, do you think the use of the comma to create a sense of rushed, 'running-on' thought may be a reflection of that to some extent?

It's possibly also a case, Saturday, of a lot of people not properly editing their ms prior to submission. I've done it myself: been so happy at finishing and thinking it's the best thing since sliced bread and then dashed half a dozen copies off to the agents. They came back pretty sharpish.

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Also, the use of the comma to create a sense of rushed, 'running-on' thought - that is a sign of a chaotic mind, and personally, I'm pretty sure I would not enjoy reading a novel like that.
As you rightly say, punctuation is there to bring order to the written word and make sure the reader gets the sense of it.


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oops, 'world', not 'word'.

I've even found a few ... which I've used to denote conversation tailing off. Not sure what to do with those. Or with the dash used to denote conversation cut off/interrupted. Are they allowed?

Yes, these are the conventional way of denoting those two things.

Naomi, yes, it was parenthetical dashes I meant.

I think the -- comes from typewriting days, representing an m-rule. On a computer, of course, you have all three: hyphen, n-rule and m-rule. I notice that one of the default auto-correct settings in Words is (or used to be) to switch those to an m-rule. As is so often the case it's stuck in America more, maybe because they're historically much more determined typists, in the ordingary way of things, than we were. Plus Hart's Rules says that it's US and OUP practice to use an m-rule for parenthetical dashes, where much of the rest of the UK now uses spaced n-rules...

Emma

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Hart's Rules recognises the 'more colloquial' use of a single dash, instead of a comma:

I didn't have an educated background - Dad was a farm labourer.

Hart's Rules recognises the 'more colloquial' use of a single dash, instead of a comma: I didn't have an educated background - Dad was a farm labourer.

Ah, thank god for that - I can stop replacing them all with commas.

I was taught "proper" typesetting before desktop publishing came into being. The traditional dash is an em-dash with no spaces around it:
I didn't have an educated background—Dad was a farm labourer.

However, an en-dash with spaces around it seems to be taking over instead:
I didn't have an educated background – Dad was a farm labourer.[/i}

(Sadly, on this forum an en-dash and a hyphen come out looking the same!)

In this particular example the dash is standing in for a semi-colon, so it can't be replaced with a comma otherwise you'd create a comma spliced sentence. So:
I didn't have an educated background; Dad was a farm labourer[/i} is grammatically correct.
I didn't have an educated background, Dad was a farm labourer[/i} is grammatically incorrect.

However, when dashes are used in parenthetical pairs, they stand in for commas.
I didn't have an educated background - as Dad was a farm labourer - but it didn't stop me going to university. is grammatically correct, as is:
I didn't have an educated background, as Dad was a farm labourer, but it didn't stop me going to university.

I do agree, though, that language is an ever-changing entity, and extreme pedants are simply trying to hold the tide back. Has anyone read any of the books by David Crystal? He's a Professor of Linguistics and has written some brilliant stuff about grammar and language.




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Damn! Something's gone terribly wrong with my italic tags, so I hope the above makes sense.