Quote Originally Posted by Clevernick View Post
Strangely, Lynne Truss (of "Eats Shoots and Leaves") made the same tongue-in-cheek observation I did. From Wikipedia:

Lynne Truss[4] observes: "so many highly respected writers observe the splice comma that a rather unfair rule emerges on this one: only do it if you're famous." She cites Samuel Beckett, E. M. Forster, and Somerset Maugham. "Done knowingly by an established writer, the comma splice is effective, poetic, dashing. Done equally knowingly by people who are not published writers, it can look weak or presumptuous. Done ignorantly by ignorant people, it is awful."

There are better, less elitist versions of this rule, I'm sure, but it's a pretty good start. It's a rule to be broken only when you know exactly how and when NOT to break it.
Okay, now, that really messes up the minds of people who learn almost all their grammar from reading. I didn't think the comman splice thing was even really a rule. I thought it was like splitting infinitives, one of those things nobody actually cares about.