SEVERAL months ago I w as surprised to see Arnold Zwicky, a linguist, use a comma splice. A few commenters took me to task for being over-picky. The question came up again in the comments several days ...

You can get Samuel Beckett’s most famous comma splice (absent commas) on a T-shirt or coffee mug Because the conventions for their use are so variable, commas can provide a quick sense of a writer’s ...