The Low down on Run Ons and Fragments

A run on sentence is like a monkey in a pile of bananas.Okay, it's nothing like a monkey in a pile of bananas, but I really liked this animation.      Another stop along your study skills journey is Grammar Station...  Some befuddled kids think a run on is a long, long, sentence. That's wrong. Some people think a fragment is a very short sentence. That's wrong, also. Some people think good writers don't use run ons or fragments. That, too, is incorrect. Popular writing is rife with run ons  It is filled with fragments. All I can say is, you have to know the rules before you can break them. So, here we go.... Learn the rules.

The basic thing you have to know is what a sentence is.

A sentence is a complete thought with two parts: a subject that is going to do some kind of action and the action.

Again, to be a sentence, you must have a complete thought with a subject that does some kind of action.

That's it in a nut shell. It's just that easy.      Now, of course, you may be learning about other parts of speech -- complicated, intricate, SCARY things, like adverbs and objects and gerunds (ugghhh).  But this little nugget of information (what a sentence is) will improve many of your essays all by itself.      So again, what you need to know is this:

To be a sentence, you must have a complete thought with a subject that does some kind of action.

Below are some simple sentences.  The subject (which is always a noun or pronoun or proper noun -- these being words that represent people, places, things, or ideas) is in red. The action word (verb) is in blue. Study them and become wise!

He took a ride in the car. John jumped into the air. Hank slammed the ball into the goal. Sarah hammered the burger down. The dog bit into the leg. Four children danced in the concert. She thought about walking home. Terrence and Jeff took Zeke for a walk.

Note two things.  First, each sentence is complete in and of itself.  You don't read it and feel like you are waiting for more information.  Second, each sentence has a red word or words and a blue word or words. The action word must be related to the subject; it provides the action that the subject will take. Give me a sophomoric little quiz to test my ability to spot subjects, please. (Hit the back button to return here!)

Now, tell me more, oh wise one.

The Run On Sentence

A run on sentence usually has the required parts of a sentence:  a complete thought, a subject, and an action word.  But it also has so much more.  If you can find a second complete thought, or a second subject with its own action word, you may have a run on   It all depends on how the two (or three or four or more) thoughts were joined.

Run on: Jerry went for a long walk Zeke went with him.      This one is obviously bad (though I have seen worse in college essays).  We have two complete thoughts just jammed together.

Thought One: Jerry went for a long walk. Thought Two: Zeke went with him.

The easiest solution is to put a period after the first complete thought. Check to see if there is a subject and a verb. There is. Do the same for the second complete thought.

So, how do you fix it?  Might you try a comma?  Please don't! WRONG:  Jerry went for a long walk, Zeke went with him. Contrary to popular opinion, a comma will not solve all of life's grammatical problems.  Jamming a comma between two complete thoughts does not get rid of the run on. It just gives it a special name: comma splice.

OK, I give up. How do you fix it?

Corrections:

Use a period!

Jerry went for a long walk. Zeke went with him.

Use a comma and a conjunction!

You can also use a comma with the conjunction "and" to correct this run on.  It's easy.   If the two complete thoughts are about the same topic (in this case, the walk), put a comma followed by a conjunction (like and, or, for, nor, but, so, yet) between the two sentences.

Jerry went for a long walk, and Zeke went with him.

Be a showoff!

Finally, for those of you who want to show off, you can use a semi-colon. Two sentences that address the same topic can be joined by a semicolon, as below. You wouldn't want to connect two dissimilar sentences though.  For instance, you shouldn't write, "I stink at grammar; I want a really good job some day." These sentences don't go together at all. . .

Jerry went for a long walk; Zeke went with him.

... but I thought Run Ons were really long sentences...