Are Run On Sentences Bad

Run-on sentences are serious writing errors that tin confuse your readers enough to make them finish reading in sheer frustration.

They tin can come well-nigh in several ways.

You might take a trouble with comma splices. Your grasp of punctuation may exist shaky, with the outcome that you write in fused sentences. Both of those errors automatically create run-on sentences.

Or you might just take a bout of verbal diarrhoea every fourth dimension you attempt to frame a judgement.

Okay, don't give me that expect. It's true.

I'm certain you remember trying to read high-school and university texts where the writers wrote in long sentences that drove you nuts. Every ane of us has had the experience of getting halfway through a judgement, losing the thread of what'south going on, and going dorsum to the beginning to try again.

From where you lot were sitting equally a educatee reader, you ran into exactly the sort of run-on sentences I'g talking about.

Why exercise you think that happened?

It's simple enough. Since most academic writers take a sound grasp of grammar and sentence construction, they probably didn't dump comma splices or fused sentences on you. Instead, they forgot who you were.

Instead of using language and sentence structures that were appropriate to your age and skills level at the time, they wrote in more than sophisticated language and sentences. The sentences were longer. The wording was more complicated. They packed each sentence with multiple ideas.

They probably didn't apply simple or chemical compound sentence structures that much. They went with circuitous sentences.

Result: you lot lost the thread and had to go back to the beginning of the sentence. Sometimes, even great writers create run-on sentences merely considering they do stuff their readers tin can't follow. That's the "verbal diarrhoea" type of run-on judgement. It may exist technically correct, but information technology's even so too confusing for the reader.

The fix for run-ons that are technically correct sentences merely are too hard for the target reader to follow is to break long sentences into shorter ones. Instead of horrifically long compound-complex sentences, rely on compound and fifty-fifty uncomplicated sentences.

In that area, I can offer some advice you can see repeated by many thoughtful people, including the likes of Albert Einstein. If you can't figure out how to take something complicated and express it clearly in language that an intelligent 12-twelvemonth-one-time would understand, you don't sympathize it well enough yourself to write nearly it.

If y'all're that author, information technology's dorsum to the drawing (or writing) lath for you.

Comma Splices: Automatic Run-on Sentences

Most writers call up that run-on sentences take to be really long to see the definition they use.

It'due south truthful that they are often long, simply length itself isn't the only key chemical element. In fact, it'due south possible to have run-on sentences that are really brusk.

Here's how it works. When you write, you're supposed to produce sentences that contain at least i complete thought each. If yous don't — that is, if the main thought in a sentence is incomplete — yous'll create a sentence fragment. That's besides a critical error.

Merely it'southward not likely to produce run-on sentences. However, yous might have two important ideas you want to include in one sentence. When that happens, y'all have to bring together or coordinate them properly. In that location are several ways to bring together to independent ideas in a single sentence so that they piece of work effectively.

What you lot can't do is join them with simply a comma separating them:

John went to the shop, so he came dwelling house.

In this example, you lot have two complete ideas — two independent clauses — joined only by a comma. Each of the independent clauses could stand by itself as a sentence:

John went to the store. Then he came abode.

These sentences are simple, but technically correct. Notwithstanding, the first version to a higher place is an example of acomma splice considering the writer has spliced or joined the 2 ideas incorrectly with only the comma between.

That'southward automatically a run-on sentence. Don't do it. Not in business writing, and not in academic writing.

If yous admittedly have to join the two independent clauses, do it properly:

John went to the the store , and and so he came home.

[using the comma + the coordinating conjunction "and"]

John went to the shop ; then he came habitation.

[using the semicolon as a coordinating device]

Pretty simple…

And And so, Fused Sentences: More Automatic Run-on Sentences

Fused sentences are sort of like comma splices, except that they're worse in terms of how your readers will react to them.

If you create fused sentences too often, your readers will stop thinking you have some grammar issues (bad enough), and outset thinking you're actually either stupid or a footling basics.

Fused sentences occur when, instead of punctuating incorrectly betwixt independent thoughts, you don't punctuate or make any try at all to join them properly:

Mary swerved the car she striking a deer the deer died.

If you lot read this aloud, you lot'll understand how readers might retrieve in that location's something a picayune off with the writer. You'll also recognize that whatever the writer was doing to proofread his or her work didn't work.

Remember something: punctuation (and the proper joining of ideas) do the jobs your voice does or doesn't exercise when you speak. If yous hear pauses when you lot read aloud a slice you've written, you accept to reverberate those pauses in your writing and so that your reader knows when and how to break. A failure to do so confuses your meaning and leaves the reader angry and frustrated.

There'south no time when that's appropriate. This is an area in which you spend the time and problem to get yourself upwards to speed with proper punctuation and coordination. Run-on sentences arising from fused judgement problems won't get you the sort of attending you really desire from readers…

Occasional "Who Do You lot Think You lot Are" Run-on Sentences

In both academic and business writing, at that place's a real danger in trying to "sound smart" to your audience.

In the academic world, generations of students have screwed upward essays just considering they thought part of the chore was to sound academic and smart. They've unremarkably taken this mean they should utilize long, convoluted sentences with big words they really don't sympathize.

Apparently, they've been relying on the "Bullshit Baffles Brains" approach to their assignments and their markers.

I'one thousand guessing they haven't thought much of their instructors' intelligence and feel. I can promise you that the essay, whatever else it'southward testing, is NOT concerned with how smart you can sound. It's near clarity of expression and thought, audio analysis, proper research and citation, and grammatically right English…not nearly bullshit.

Information technology's all too like shooting fish in a barrel to get trapped in run-on sentences of your own making in an effort to brand yourself sound learned and "academic." Don't go at that place.

Just FYI.

In the business world, everything you lot write comes back to business interests and money.

This is existent stuff. If yous haven't washed your homework, bad things will happen. When y'all endeavour to snow your readers with long, complicated sentences full of electric current jargon and buzzwords to insulate yourself from real analytical work, your audience volition see through you immediately.

Y'all'll also lose command of the sentences because, underneath information technology all, you really have no inkling what you're doing.

Business concern readers will non exist impressed with any attempts to audio "in the know," particularly if you write sentences that are long enough to lose them.

So, be straight. Be objective, analytical and authentic. And for heaven's sake, do your homework and know what you're talking most.

That's Information technology…For Now

I don't want you to think that if you go past the "4 Dangerous Errors…" from the last few posts, all will be well. I hateful, it might be…

Or information technology might not.

There are plenty of other errors and pitfalls yous can see in your writing, and I'll effort to go to every bit many of them as I can.

I've besides got to apologize once again for the delays between posts recently. I've noted before that I've been wrestling with a medical result that, if I'm to believe the pundits of medical statistics, should have finished me off some time ago.

However, I'chiliad old, stubborn, and merely manifestly ornery about some things…and I feckin' detest statistics 😉 I'll go back to yous as before long as I tin with some other post most a grammatical consequence that should be completely innocent. Unfortunately, in the age of political definiteness gone batshit crazy, information technology's become a matter…

Nosotros'll talk. Seeya. 😉