ShmoopTube

00:03

Here's your shmoop du jour, brought to you by Moby Dick.

00:09

I like poetry much more than ancient novels, my brother is exactly the opposite and prefers

00:15

Moby Dick to Emily Dickinson.

00:21

Look at that sentence.

00:22

It's just two sentences that the writer unsuccessfully tried to stick together with

00:25

a comma. Alert, alert, comma splice!

00:28

There are two acceptable ways to combine two independent clauses.

00:32

With a comma AND a conjunction... or with a semicolon.

00:37

There are no options with a semicolon here... so we need to find one of the other choices

00:40

that uses a comma with a conjunction.

00:43

Let's look at all the answers carefully here. Besides the original sentence, they

00:46

all use a comma, and then a conjunction quite nicely. So our job is to figure out which

00:51

conjunction is the best for the job. In the sentence, there is a pretty clear contrast

00:56

between the two parts. "I like poetry", in contrast, "my brother likes the opposite."

01:02

And doesn't really communicate that contrast, and neither does so.

01:06

But, on the other hand, works perfectly -- communicating that he does not like this but that.

01:12

Here is a general strategy we should take away from this problem.

01:16

Read through all the answers before we choose one. If we just looked for a comma and a conjunction,

01:21

B would have worked. If we had rushed through this question, it

01:23

might have kicked our... but.

Full Transcript