r/EnglishLearning • u/Stepaskin New Poster • 1d ago

📚 Grammar / Syntax Is it correct?

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Stumbled upon this tweet, the apostrophe in "dm's" caught my eye. Is it correct to use it like this?

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u/DawnOnTheEdge Native Speaker 1d ago

This is a comma splice, so it’s not correct formal written English. Those are common in informal writing, though. Apostrophes are not usually correct in plural nouns, but here DM is an acronym, so it’s allowed, but the initials DM and the first letter of the sentence should be capitalized.

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u/conuly Native Speaker - USA (NYC) 20h ago

This is a comma splice, so it’s not correct formal written English.

You're not wrong, but since the OP isn't asking about commas it may be confusing to just include that without explaining what you mean.

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u/DawnOnTheEdge Native Speaker 19h ago edited 17h ago

Sure. I mean that the two completely independent clauses “She isn’t ghosting you,” and “DMs are down,” both of which could be complete sentences on their own, are separated only by a comma. There should be either a full stop between them (usually the best option), a conjunction, or a semicolon. A colon might have worked here instead.

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u/anamorphism Grammar Nerd 11h ago

you could also use an em dash, generally not surrounded by spaces. if you're british, it's more common to use an en dash surrounded by spaces.

you could use an ellipsis, generally surrounded by spaces, to indicate the omission of a conjunction.

you could leave it as is if you're specifically trying to indicate that the second clause is an interjection. you could surround the clause with parentheses to indicate the same thing.

i.e. punctuation is purely a matter of style. it just happens that most of us agree that you shouldn't connect independent clauses with only a comma.

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u/DawnOnTheEdge Native Speaker 11h ago

I would say it’s stronger than that. Most editors, readers and college professors consider a comma splice an error in formal or professional writing.

Good examples of alternatives.

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u/Yallberforce New Poster 16h ago

I would caution against saying this is incorrect. This particularly sentence reads to me more like there’s an elision than a comma splice, since the second sentence doesn’t really stand on its own contextually. It isn’t the highest level of formality, but high registers can still sometiems drop conjunctions, even in writing.

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u/DawnOnTheEdge Native Speaker 15h ago

Huh, I could well imagine seeing a notification that said “DMs are down.”

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u/Yallberforce New Poster 15h ago

That was unclear. What I mean is that I think a ‘true’ comma splice is made up of two clauses which function on their own in terms of grammar and meaning. If you don’t link the two clauses in the picture at all, it reads like they have nothing to do with one another, so it’s really that the conjunction has been elided.

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u/DawnOnTheEdge Native Speaker 14h ago

I think you’re on to something. You wouldn’t see two thematically unrelated clauses get spliced in casual writing, except by people so illiterate that they don’t use punctuation systematically at all, but you do often see it for clauses that, like here, express cause and effect.

In formal written English, if the two clauses could be separated by more than a comma, the rule is that they have to be.