That's not a comma splice. You use the word "and" as a conjunction, so you should be using a comma. This is a comma splice:

Matt is a militant grammarian, he's rather anal about punctuation.

See? No conjunction, just two clauses that could stand alone spliced together with a comma. It pains me even to see it there. Kind of like the misplaced semi-colon in your final sentence. "Using a comma splice in the previous sentence" cannot stand alone and therefore should not be separated from the independent clause by a semi-colon.

It's a compulsion, really. My much-venerated high school English teacher warned us this would happen.


shenme shenme shenme - It's a cat!