Comma splice Jr. advises using a semicolon, not a comma, to join two grammatically complete clauses, except when the clauses are "very short" and "similar in form", for example: Comma splices are similar to run-on sentences, which join two independent clauses without any punctuation and without a conjunction such as "and", "but" "for", etc. Sometimes the two types of sentences are treated differently based on the presence or absence of a comma, but most writers consider the comma splice as a special type of run-on sentence. According to "Garner's Modern English Usage": Comma splices often arise when writers use conjunctive adverbs (such
Punctuation of English their cover letters. In contrast, closed punctuation uses commas and periods in a strict manner. Closed style is common in presentations, especially in bulleted and numbered lists. It is also frequently used in advertising, marketing materials, news headlines, and signage. The approximate average frequencies for English punctuation marks per 1000 words based on 723,000 words of assorted texts are as follows (as of 2013, but with some text corpora dating to 1998 and 1987): The apostrophe , (sometimes called inverted comma in British English) is used to mark possession as in ""John's book"", and to mark letters omitted in contractions,