Dear Grammarian

Dear Grammar Nerd, 
 

I have a grammatical question that I'm fighting about with a friend.  It may end our friendship.  Could you please save our relationship by telling her that I'm right? 
 

Is this following sentence a run-on sentence or not?  "Hello Bubba, thank you for letting me know." 
 

Thank you!

Sincerely,
I Don't Have Better Things to Do

Gentle Reader,

I am glad you are finally beginning to contemplate the serious things in life after devoting yourself to frivolity all these years!

You are both wrong, I suspect.  It is a comma splice.

The correct punctuation should be:

"Hello, Bubba.  Thank you for letting me know." 

Hello, Bubba = an independent clause.
Thank you for letting me know = an independent clause

(Independent clause = part of a sentence that can stand on its own as a sentence if it needed to.  For example, if the rest of the sentence packed up and left, perhaps to run off and join the circus, the independent clause would just shrug its shoulders and point out that it didn't really need the rest of the sentence, so there!

Two independent clauses linked with a comma and no conjunction = comma splice

I hope that your friendship will continue, despite the gravity of the issue.  There are more important things in life, after all, like chocolate.

Grammatically yours,
J. Pario