I asked a question earlier regarding alternative ways of structuring indirect questions (please refer to this link).
Forgive me if I'm over analyzing this, but I never write sentences like this so I am not sure about the punctuation.
"I am curious, what is the time?"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the definition of a comma splice when you join two independent clauses without a conjunction? Both "I am curious" and "What is the time" are complete sentences. Normally if I were to say this statement, I would put a pause between the two clauses. If i said it faster, I would say it as an indirect question such as, "I am curious what the time is" or "I'm curious about the time".
The responses in my previous post said to use either a comma, colon, or a dash. Would a comma really be okay, or would this be a comma splice?
Second question is this: Since you start with the statement, "I am curious" wouldn't you have to end the sentence with a period?
By the way, the context of my question would be for formal emails with a conversational tone, and I would be writing in the 1st person.