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...
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.)
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
score 1 · canonical