Every one of has heard it a hundred of times that: every single rules of English grammar matters. We all want to write a good paper without any flaws and errors. The problem is that writing a good paper is seldom fun. If you’ve studied a foreign language in school, if English is your secondary language, you no doubt will be in problems because you won’t have that much idea to write organized writings without any errors. It can get tedious.
Errors such as coma splice error, Subject-verb agreement error, weak thesis, weak evidential supports, counterarguments and your general style of writing takes the vampire mode and drains all of your confidence out of you as a vampire drains the blood out of you, you feels like you are being executed. Those errors takes your dreams off, they scared the hell out us as if a zombie is trying to kill us. You always feels like you are imprisoned by such flaws and grammatical mistakes that often occurs because such flaws distorts the beauty of your paper.
Comma splice was the error that I made most in my every writings. Comma splice is the use of comma to join the two independent clause. Comma splice errors are like very much similar to run-on sentences. Wikipedia defines run-on as “a run-on is a sentence in which two or more independent clauses (i. e. , complete sentences) are joined without an appropriate punctuation or conjunction. ” A comma splice occurs when two independent clauses are connected with only a comma. “Comma splices often arise when writers use conjunctive adverbs to separate two independent clauses instead of using a coordinate conjunction.
A coordinating conjunction is one of the seven words: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so. A conjunctive adverb is a word like furthermore, however, or moreover. A conjunctive adverb and a comma (or a conjunctive adverb between two commas) is not strong enough to separate two independent clauses and creates a comma splice; only semicolons and periods are strong enough to separate two independent clauses without a conjunction” (Buckley, 2003). For example, we gathered around, we then moved to Kansas City.
This sentence contains comma splice error. And it can be resolved or corrected by using a conjunction “and”. We gathered around, and we then moved to Kansas City. Every time, when I wrote papers I always made the comma splice, the subject-verb agreement errors and weakly documented writings. The comma splice troubled me so hard. I sometime feel comma splice as an error, a horror, a nightmare, an insult- something so terrible, to be dreaded and denounced. I feel so, may be because of my incomplete knowledge of sentences development.
The way of writing essays and writing articles was way different in high school. We were given to write a personal essays. Those personal essay didn’t contain any thesis. We just wrote what we thought about the topic without any research on that topic. We were supposed to use British English. From elementary school to high school we studied only British English, all the textbooks and study materials was based on the rules of British Grammar. Also, the papers we wrote were just graded randomly and roughly.
May be because of these sets of practice I may have committed mistakes. Those couples of writings, readings and quizzes in Composition I class has help to perpetuate fear of making mistakes and ignorance of how language works. Comma splices often create a noticeably casual effect that is widely considered ill-suited to contexts such as essays, reports, and business writing. On my first paper I got 13. 75 for my grammar. I made frequent comma splice in my first writing. I wrote sentences like “She was happy enough to live alone, she was gaining mental peace”.
Later, I got known that the correct format was “She was happy enough to live alone; she was gaining mental peace”. In my others papers too, I wrote sentences which contains comma splice like “the people are stuck in between, many of them are killed by the firing. ” This comma splice has imprisoned me. Whenever, I tries to communicate my thoughts via writing! make comma errors. This sort of comma error has abandoned me to communicate clearly, to present my thoughts smoothly.
I am sure, if anyone reads my writing, he/she may thought “what the heck he is writing? “Does he has any sense of grammar? ” I am always feared of getting accused and getting insulted by my ignorance. Every time when I sit to write a paper I imagined the rest of the world as a vampire, and in-between of those vampire Tam trying to bleed myself just to attract those vampire towards me. Among the signs that more particularly betray the uneducated writer is inability to see when a comma is not a sufficient stop. I am learning to tackle the comma splice. I am using my knowledge as a light against these vampire faced comma errors.
I have learned about the rules of grammar. Now I know, how to fix this comma splice. My English composition class has helped me to build self-confidence while writing articles. Now I know how to write an organized writing, how to support thesis, how to counter argue the thesis and how to document the references. I am not the old Deepesh now, I am being an intellectual. I know many things more now. And now I think I can fight against this comma splice. Yes, I can fight against this vampire and zombie faced problems that| encounter, while writing a paper.
