Location: Wal-Mart children’s department; Danville, Va.
Picture taken: August 2007
Mr. Hawke was checking out these tees while I was searching for some bargain shorts for little Attie, who, at almost 11 months, is growing out of clothes so fast we can hardly keep up! (We won’t even get into the crawling everywhere at lightning-fast speed and grabbing for everything he’s told not to. ;)
Although our oldest son, Ryan, often sports his “I don’t suffer from laziness; I enjoy every minute of it” t-shirt, we did not purchase it! Nope, those cutesy tees are off-limits. Mr. Hawke thinks they’re disrespectful, and I don’t disagree.
The grammatical problem with this little tee is the comma splice it contains. Two independent clauses, each with its own subject and verb (understood you + call and I + am) are separated with merely a comma.
Rule: Two independent clauses can be separated with a period and a capital letter; a semicolon; a comma and a conjunction (and, or, but, for, nor, so, or yet); or a semicolon, a transitional expression (like however), and a comma.
Unless otherwise noted, all images and text are copyright © Viable Design. All rights reserved.
© 2008 – 2010, mrshawke-dot-com.
Most of my teaching resources are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License, which means you can feel free to use them with attribution as long as you don’t use them commercially. If you’re not sure, don’t hesitate to ask me. Unfortunately, I am currently unable to send out my tests and quizzes, but I am hoping to establish a less time-consuming alternative for this in the near future. Sorry!!
