Comma Splice - Acceptable Uses

Acceptable Uses

Strunk & White note that splices are sometimes acceptable when the clauses are short and alike in form, such as:

The gate swung apart, the bridge fell, the portcullis was drawn up.

The famous sentence I came, I saw, I conquered falls into the same category.

Fowler (third edition, 1996) notes a number of examples by reputable authors:

We are all accustomed to the … conjoined sentences that turn up from children or from our less literate friends… Curiously, this habit of writing comma-joined sentences is not uncommon in both older and present-day fiction. Modern examples: I have the bed still, it is in every way suitable for the old house where I live now (E. Jolley); Marcus … was of course already quite a famous man, Ludens had even heard of him from friends at Cambridge (I. Murdoch).

The comma splice is often considered acceptable in poetic writing. The editors of the Jerusalem Bible translate Isaiah 11:4 as:

His word is a rock that strikes the ruthless, his sentences bring death to the wicked.

The British author Lynne Truss observes: "so many highly respected writers observe the splice comma that a rather unfair rule emerges on this one: only do it if you're famous." She cites Samuel Beckett, E. M. Forster, and Somerset Maugham. "Done knowingly by an established writer, the comma splice is effective, poetic, dashing. Done equally knowingly by people who are not published writers, it can look weak or presumptuous. Done ignorantly by ignorant people, it is awful."

Comma splices are also acceptable in passages of spoken (or interior) dialogue, and are sometimes used deliberately to emulate spoken language more closely.