4. Which of the following sentences contains a comma splice?
A.The kitten climbed the drapes, it couldn't figure out how to get down.
B.The cruise ship docked on Oahu, then again on Maui.
C.We need help with organization, structure, and spelling.
D.Our friend, who travelled from Tennessee, was quite tired when he arrived.
I picked A, because these are two independent sentences that could stand alone. They do not require a comma between them. Is my thinking correct?
Correct.
What punctuation SHOULD be used, do you think?
A period, if the sentences were separated. However, you could use a semicolon to demonstrate the close relationship.
Exactly right, on both!!
=)
Which one of the following sentences is correctly punctuated?
A. Look up, look down, and look all around?
B. Smile when you say that, Partner?
C. When will the winter end?
D. Look at me, then say what you have to say?
Yes, your thinking is correct. Option A, "The kitten climbed the drapes, it couldn't figure out how to get down," contains a comma splice. A comma splice occurs when two independent clauses (i.e., sentences that can stand alone) are joined by a comma without any coordinating conjunction (such as "and," "but," or "or") or proper punctuation. In this case, "The kitten climbed the drapes" and "it couldn't figure out how to get down" are two independent clauses that could be separate sentences. However, they are incorrectly joined by a comma.
To identify a comma splice or rectify the issue, you can often correct it by adding a coordinating conjunction like "and," "but," or "or" after the comma. In this case, you could fix the comma splice in option A by adding "but" or "and":
- The kitten climbed the drapes, but it couldn't figure out how to get down.
- The kitten climbed the drapes, and it couldn't figure out how to get down.