Punctuation choices…

I learned something new a few weeks ago from editor Bobbie Christmas’s newsletter—rather the official name of something I haven’t liked for a long time. Consider: Judy’s the section head, Bill’s the IT guy. I never have liked that construction. Now I have a name for it: the comma splice. I’ll accept a conjunction or a semicolon in place of that comma, but a comma splice stops me in my tracks when I’m reading or reviewing. And too many authors are using it. Maybe they think it’s cool; it’s not...