In English, there are not so many instances of complete sentences that are separated by comma, like:
He wears jeans, Tuesdays are casual day.
Is there a rule against that taught in school ? Just a tacit custom of English? Or is that particularly bad or strange at all?
(More commonly it's for dramatic effects: They fought, they fuzzed, they made up. But that's about all.)
Robert said
In English, there are not so many instances of complete sentences that are separated by comma, like:
He wears jeans, Tuesdays are casual day.
Is there a rule against that taught in school ? Just a tacit custom of English? Or is that particularly bad or strange at all?
(More commonly it's for dramatic effects: They fought, they fuzzed, they made up. But that's about all.)
When I was in high school over 40 years ago, it was wrong and called a comma-splice. Since then, I have found that the semicolon is what should be used, as in, "They fought; they fuzzed; they made up."
Semicolon is what I was taught as well. That's why you see so few semicolons. Writing like this is very rare.
You know, I was just noticing that recently. Seems I see less and less use of the semicolon, though it's still "legal" punctuation when you need to join two or more independent clauses. I rarely use them myself. I think that, especially for online content, people are tending to follow the rule of thumb that simpler and shorter sentences are just more readable. If you write a paragraph of text using semicolons, and an identical paragraph using separate sentences, you'll find that it will score as "more readable" on websites that test readability. Here's one that I often use: https://readability-score.com/
In the late 1950s the harsh task-mistresses of the Seattle Public Schools demanded that independent clauses be separated by a semi-colon; now they do look a bit clunky: “They fought; they fuzzed; they made up.”
Perhaps Kurt Vonnegut has something to do with this. He wrote: “Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.” (from A Man Without a Country, 2005)
Lest this be taken too seriously, here's what followed:
"And I realize some of you may be having trouble deciding whether I am kidding or not. So from now on I will tell you when I'm kidding."