Comma plus and

I really hate comma plus and.

It's not a comma splice. A comma splice is two independent clauses joined by a comma, forming a fused sentence. Grammatically incorrect.

Comma plus and is used in grammatically correct but horribly awkward and awful ways. 

I have strong feelings about this. My feelings are that this is very bad writing. So don't do it. Now I will explain why.

Every time I read my beloved Murderbot books, especially the beginning of the first novel, I get smacked in the face with so many comma plus and constructions. I really want everyone to stop doing this.

There are good reasons. Connections between ideas should be more than just a plus sign, primarily. In fiction, the connections between ideas generally range from something like because to something like although. In other words, there are causal connections, not just a plus b plus c.

Authors Joan Aiken and Ursula K. LeGuin, arguably my fiction parents, both have said versions of this in their works about writing. To paraphrase:

The king died and then the queen died is not a story. 

The king died and then the queen died of grief IS a story. Because there's a causal connection between those two things. 

I had to learn this the hard way in a larger plotting sense in my writing. Several entire novels consisted of events happening, with no drive to them. It was only when I started writing the main character making choices that drive the action that I began to have a narrative drive to the stories. 

Elsewhere I will talk about character, conflict, choice, and consequences. But it's the same sense that I'm talking about here on the sentence level. We can't just have a sequence of events. We have to see things driving other things. 

The first sentence of Martha Wells's All Systems Red is a master class in excellent story set-up:

"I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites."

I get a little squirmy when sentences tell events out of order, to be honest. I want things to be in order. But it's not a requirement. I just always dislike sentences that go out of time order, like, "Before I went to the car, I fell down the front steps." I want that to be something like: "I fell down the front steps on the way to the car."

That first sentence goes b then a then c. But I understand wanting to put the quite eye-catching "mass murderer" part up front. Of course, anyone could be a mass murderer any time, so what was holding this person back? What is a governor module? We are instantly engaged and interested and curious. We know a whole lot about Murderbot by the way the sentence ends, with the entertainment feed. 

By the way, if you give me directions out of order that way, I will be completely confused. Before you walk the dog, take the compost to the compost pile and rinse out the bowl, but when you come back make sure you don't spill any lettuce seeds, but first go next door and see if they have the newspaper. These are the ravings of a disordered mind! 

If you keep things in chronological order, then we can drive the narrative forward even on the sentence level, with actions causing consequences, not the other way around. 

The first few pages of All Systems Red are full of comma plus and in a way that drives me wild when I read it. 

First of all, you don't need that comma if you're connecting two things that actually should be connected. Wells leaves it out when the two thoughts go together. On page two, there's a fine example of this: "I was looking at the sky and mentally poking at the feed when the bottom of the crater exploded." Nobody would ever use a comma there because those two things are happening at the same time and belong together. 

Here's where it gets messy: "I dragged Bharadwaj out of its mouth and shoved myself in there instead, and discharged my weapon down its throat and then up toward where I hoped the brain would be." In my ebook, it's on page three. 

The first part, before the comma, is terrific. But then why do we have a comma plus and next? It's because this sentence is a string of pearls.

I dragged

I shoved

I discharged my weapon

I discharged my weapon up

I understand that the point is to create a rapid-fire sequence of events, but it just becomes awkward. That is too many ands in one sentence. To improve it, I'd use other coordinating conjunctions besides just and all the time. Break it into two sentences or connect it with one of those lovely words that drive the motion forward, like then. There are a lot of words called "adverbs of time," a beautiful term. There's a list here, but the main point is, PLUS does not drive the action forward.

It reminds me of how I eat sometimes. My friend has accused me of eating ingredients. I'm sure I gave her a blank look and kept eating plain carrots, then plain bread, then whatever else was in front of me. I can't be hungry and plan simultaneously.

A string of pearls doesn't do the job as well as connections that drive the motion forward.

I like the first part: "I dragged Bharadwaj out of its mouth and shoved myself in there instead," but I would then just break it there and make a new sentence. "I discharged my weapon down its throat then up toward where I hoped the brain would be." It's still utilitarian and not fancy, but it's sequential thoughts. 

Notice that those events in the first part do not happen at the same time or as part of the same movement as those in the second part. If they were all part of the same movement, I might be okay with it. Like this: "I fell down the chute and tried to brace my legs, but scraped them painfully against the rough surface." You're doing those things simultaneously.  

That's the ultimate point of AND when it joins these things. Those things should be happening at the same time. When comma plus and is used over and over to show sequence, it comes across as severely lacking in forward motion. Or misunderstanding that plus does not equal then.

Does one action cause the next? Say so. Does one event require the next? Say that. 

Plenty of times we do multiple things at the same time but it's still super boring. "I sat on the couch and watched tv and ate carrots and drank tea." That might be factually accurate, but it's going NOWHERE. Who cares? You are so boring. You are stuck in an eternal boring present.

Much more interesting: "I sat on the couch watching tv while I ate carrots and thought about whether to bake shepherd's pie later." That person has a future. Sure, they're still eating ingredients, but at least there's a shepherd's pie in the future. And there IS a future. That has motion to it. 

Comma plus and puts everything into an eternal static present. It's a pile of rocks. 

Every event in fiction should drive you on to the next event. It has to have narrative motion or we're just sitting there. The same holds true on the grammatical sentence level. 

There are more instances of and that I would like to kill in these first few pages, even some without commas, like this one:

"Another burst of commands from the governor module came through and I backburnered it without bothering to decode them."

I hate that. Why is that and there? Destroy. Break into two sentences. Or use a semicolon. Or use but which is much more interesting. But tells you there's a conflict between two things, where and just says both exist, which tells us nothing. 

"Another burst of commands from the governor module came through, but I backburnered it without bothering to decode them."

MUCH BETTER.

This one is fine, but would  be better as but:

"I was far less vulnerable in this situation than he was and I wasn't exactly having a great time either."

Kill the following comma plus and with extreme prejudice. (We could discuss the having managed construction another time.) It should be two sentences:

"The feed was quiet now, Mensah having managed to use her leadership priority to mute everything but MedSystem and the hopper, and all I could hear on the hopper feed was the others frantically shushing each other."

 "The feed was quiet now. Mensah had used her leadership priority to mute everything but MedSystem and the hopper. All I could hear on the hopper feed was the others frantically shushing each other."

This one is fine because it furthers the point instead of just being a pointless plus sign:

"They don't give murderbots decent education modules on anything except murdering, and even those are the cheap versions."

Partly you can tell the good ones from the bad ones because NOBODY would ever say the bad ones out loud. We simply don't use comma plus and this way in spoken English. Nobody ever does or ever will. Try saying all the bad examples out loud and you'll see. They don't make sense with how we think or speak. That's the crucial way to tell if you're doing it right or wrong. Say it out loud. Comma plus and will always sound extremely awkward and tacked on. 

In summary, death to comma plus and and any and that is just functioning as a plus sign instead of being a sensible connection between two simultaneous or otherwise essentially connected ideas that drive narrative motion forward. 

Use other words! Use words that mean things. But, then, except, unless, because, although, while, but instead, but unfortunately, so many more. And don't be afraid of breaking things into separate sentences. If you find yourself using comma plus and that's almost always a sign those things don't really belong together anyway.