It’s no secret that proofreaders have their pet peeves. For this proofreader, the error that leaps off the page of nearly every written communication—from emails, to letters, to newspaper articles, to business documents, to her children’s compositions (a painful admission)—is the often undiagnosed comma splice. So prevalent has this mistake become that it fails to catch the attention of even the most prolific writers and copyeditors, and is considered normal and acceptable punctuation.