I emailed IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) earlier today to ask about the new content on example.com. To my surprise, their VP replied. Here is the email: I am happy to try and answer any questions you have. The changes we make to the site from time-to-time are usually informed by a desire to either reduce the overall bandwidth demands of serving the site, or improve its utility. At its heart it is a placeholder...
It should be a semicolon, the clauses are independent. A lot of people make this mistake, that doesn’t make it right. One of my teachers said “if you can replace it with a period, it should be a semicolon”, she was a great teacher. I hope these are clearly examples of what not to do, I know sometimes irony doesn’t come across on the internet.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
This would read not nearly so well with semicolons.
I don’t agree that semicolons would hurt it in any way, but that’s a list, a comma-separated list (of things people were saying about the time,¹ how “the period[']s noisiest authorities insisted on its being received”), which “This is not a service, avoid relying on it for testing and monitoring purposes” is not. I don’t think “Alice brought soup, Bob brought salad, and Carol brought cake” would be called a comma-splice. (The lack of an “and” in the Dickens quotation is merely asyndeton.)
Why? It reads fine.
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It should be a semicolon, the clauses are independent. A lot of people make this mistake, that doesn’t make it right. One of my teachers said “if you can replace it with a period, it should be a semicolon”, she was a great teacher. I hope these are clearly examples of what not to do, I know sometimes irony doesn’t come across on the internet.
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*It should be a semicolon; the clauses are independent.
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I; for one; appreciated the joke-
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watches the joke soar high over your head (check out every sentence in their reply)
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oh, I’m dumb
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It’s always safest to do this consciously when correcting writing, to work around https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry’s_law
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With that phrasing, it should definitely be a semicolon. They even use a semicolon in the French and Russian.
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In this case, in French, a comma and a semicolon are equally valid. Most people use commas only, though. Dunno for English.
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It’s an error in English. If you want to use a comma to join two independent clauses, you need a coordinating conjunction (and, but, so, …).
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This would read not nearly so well with semicolons.
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Those who know the rules are allowed to break them for artistic effect :)
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I don’t agree that semicolons would hurt it in any way, but that’s a list, a comma-separated list (of things people were saying about the time,¹ how “the period[']s noisiest authorities insisted on its being received”), which “This is not a service, avoid relying on it for testing and monitoring purposes” is not. I don’t think “Alice brought soup, Bob brought salad, and Carol brought cake” would be called a comma-splice. (The lack of an “and” in the Dickens quotation is merely asyndeton.)
¹ apposition, not a comma splice
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That⸻is a list.
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