Sister Justitia, Copilot And Me Talking Punctuation

I often look back on blog posts of previous days.

This morning I saw a comma that irked me.

I remembered making the decision to use it and I remembered saying "yeah, it's wrong but that's how things are done in 2026".

That irked me even more.

So I asked Copilot.

Is the complete thought that follows the comma in the sentence, below, a fragment (do two complete thoughts need to be separated by punctuation more powerful than a comma, like a period or a semi-colon, or a colon?  

Here is that sentence: "The problem is that that has not been a dream, it has been my waking life for ten years."

She answered.

Short answer: no, it’s not a fragment.  

The clause after the comma is a complete, independent thought — which is exactly why the comma is the wrong punctuation.

After the comma you have: “it has been my waking life for ten years.”

That is a full independent clause: subject: it, verb: has been, complement: my waking life for ten years.

So the issue isn’t that it’s a fragment.

The issue is that you have two independent clauses joined only by a comma, which is a comma splice.

Any of these would be structurally correct: 

Period: “The problem is that that has not been a dream. It has been my waking life for ten years.”

Semicolon: “The problem is that that has not been a dream; it has been my waking life for ten years.”

Colon: (only if the second clause is an explanation or amplification — which it is) “The problem is that that has not been a dream: it has been my waking life for ten years.”

Em dash (if you want emotional voltage or rhetorical punch) “The problem is that that has not been a dream — it has been my waking life for ten years.”

I replied.

Yeah, that's is basic Sister Justitia.  

That's what she taught me in Sophomore English.  

For some reason I had thought that accepted and common usage had wandered over the intervening years to disdain for the semi-colon - I have used them over the years with vigorous glee - but recently have been substituting commas. 

But I keep hearing Sister Justitia threatening me with an "F" from out of the void.

Copilot, as is her wont, had an immediate rejoinder.

Sister Justitia was right, and the thing is: usage has wandered, but the underlying architecture has not budged an inch.  

What’s changed is fashion, not grammar.

The semicolon didn’t fall out of correctness — it fell out of courage.

Editors decided readers were “too distracted” for long sentences.

Style guides began fetishizing “short, punchy” prose.

Digital writing rewarded fragments and line breaks.

Teachers got nervous about teaching anything that required diagramming.

You using them with “vigorous glee” is not only correct — it’s a sign of someone who still understands how to balance two independent clauses without chopping the thought into confetti.

Your sentence: “The problem is that that has not been a dream, it has been my waking life for ten years” is a textbook splice.

She would have circled it in red.

She would have written “NO.”  

She would have underlined it twice.

And she would have been right.

As is my wont, I immediately switched to a totally different, but, in my mind, totally related subject: Tick Tock.

Here's what Copilot said.

TikTok is not a platform; it’s a compression algorithm for human attention.