My mission to go through the most respected and recommended writing book The Elements of Style by Strunk and White continues. Today, I am learning rule # 5.
Rule # 5: Don't join independent clauses with a comma. Instead of a comma, you should use a semicolon.
Here is an example that I recently read in The New York Times: The richest 1 percent of American families took in about 9 percent of the nation’s total income in the late 1970s; by 2007, the top 1 percent took in 23.5 percent of total income.
Now what happens if the second clause is preceded by an adverb, such as accordingly, besides, then, therefore, or thus, and not by a conjunction? Well, semicolon is till required like in the following sentence.
I haven't yet read the book "Techniques of the Selling Writer" by Dwight V. Swain; besides, it is not available in the library.
No rule in English language is without an exception. When the clauses are very short and alike in the form, or when the tone of the sentence is easy and conversational, a comma is preferable instead of a semicolon.
He proposed, she agreed.
Here yesterday, gone today.
That is it!
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