To contact the school over comma splices?

[CocktailQueen]

Or am I being too pedantic?

The school newsletter usually has a few typos, but this week the head teacher's letter but had about 8 comma splices. I winced every time.

Wibu to email her - we are acquaintances out of school - and let her know in a friendly way? I don't know if the office staff type it or she does...

Examples are

We love learning in our school, this week I was delighted to see x and y...

I hope you enjoyed the Xmas service, many thanks to the vicar...

Thank you for all your cards and Christmas gifts, we do appreciate them...

Having never realised what a comma splice was I did manage to get 10/10 on the quiz. I have obviously learned something new this evening!

From the same website, I also learned that it is correct to use a common fore a short conjunction (and, but, as, etc) which I hadn't realised was needed before today.

So tell me what you want what ya really really want yer name to be Moln.

The letter will probably come from the office and not the head teacher, obviously head teacher will write a brief note or something and someone will type it out, I had a letter from Senco this week, it had several spelling errors, but i would never dream of mentioning it as it would have come from the office x even still i wouldnt mention it.

I gave up on the quiz after I failed the first three.

I must have blocked out the lesson on comma splices at school because I don't remember this! I have a feeling that I'm very guilty of this myself.

I might just go with Comma Splice, or maybe, to be playful, Common Splice.

I'm not sure I'd assume the head teacher was better at English than the office staff, they may not have been an English teacher.

I don't recall doing any grammar in school. Primary or secondary.

I've never heard of a comma splice & haven't RTFT but surely semicolons are needed here?

Semi colon are needed for independent but related clause.

Issue is identifying clauses and their independance and figuring out their relationship.

I loathe the comma slice, but the only one of the examples that bothers me is the first one.

I wasn't taught grammar at school either (it was the 80s) so I have some sympathy, but the amount of badly punctuated crap I see drives me mad.

hmm, got 8/10, had never heard of this before now feel I should do more grammar quizzes!

The trouble is if you don't comma splice you have to add conjunctions or use a pile of semicolons.

Using a full stop and new sentence it reads like a Powerpoint bullet list
. Paul loves to travel.
. He visits Hungary at least once a year.

Language is for communicating information, rules from the dawn of time, followed, need not be, provided content is preserved.

10/10 here - most of the splices cry out for a semi-colon in my view. It would annoy me too OP but probably going a bit far to complain.

However, I think we'd get along

On internet bulletin boards people write very quickly, making grammatical and spelling errors, and that's okay, mostly.

I think it is reasonable to expect a higher standard from a school, particularly a head teacher.

I had the good fortune (or misfortune, I'm not sure which) of being educated just after WWII, when spelling and grammar was very important. It's not important anymore, just as it wasn't important a few hundred years ago.

The OP's head teacher is leading the movement towards functional literacy. Or do I mean functional illiteracy? Hmmm...

I'm glad I'm old, and won't be around to see how this all turns out.

OP - my husband would think we are one and the same. I regularly bitch about our Head's inability to use "me, myself and I" correctly. That said, I've also been talked out of complaining about it on the grounds that it would make me look like an arse. I feel your pain, but think you should leave it....

Ugh! Yanbu. Could be worse, though, so I'd let it go.

DH writes very long wordy boring as hell reports to clients, full of commas splicing action. Thankfully he gives them to me to proof read, and then just has to put up with my bellowing "FFS can't you finish a bloody sentence ever!" as I rewrite the whole report. I know far more than I need to about very specific tax issues . Occasionally I let him keep a comma splice which confuses him and keeps him on his toes, as he can't work out why something that was not allowed last week, is suddenly allowed this week. I suspect he knows all the grammar rules, and is just winding me up.

I thought a comma splice is a style error rather than a grammatical error. Putting in no punctuation (and hence creating a run-on sentence would be grammatical error though.

That said, I hate semi colons so I may be biased.

YANBU. It's depressing. But I'd still let it go.
Start by hunting down the greengrocers and signwriters.

9/10 on the Comma splice test. I'd never heard of it though. As I work in a primary, it's helpful to know about it.

OP don't email the head; you will look bonkers. I kept schtum about a howler in the HT's presentation at a
training session.