Run-on Sentences
The term run-on sentence is used to describe two or more independent clauses put together without punctuation between them. This is a very common error among new writers in English.
| The Petronas Towers are enormous steel buildings in Kuala Lumpur they are the tallest buildings in the world and they were built on a racetrack. |
| The Empire State Building is 1,252 feet tall was built in 1931 it was built in New York. |
These two sentences are
run-on sentences; they both go on after the simple sentence is finished.
We
can fix these run ons by simply dividing the run-on sentences into two
sentences.
| The Petronas Towers are enormous steel buildings in Kuala Lumpur. The are the tallest buildings in the world and they were built on a racetrack. |
| The Empire State Building is 1,252 feet tall. It was built in 1931 in New York. |
If you have two independent clauses--complete sentences--without periods or a conjunction joining them together, they are run-on sentences and need to be fixed.
Here's another run-on sentence.
| The World Trade Center towers were completed in 1973 they were the tallest buildings in the world for only one year. |
Since these two independent clauses are closely related, they can be combined into one sentence if you use a semicolon. The semicolon is the only punctuation (other than a period) that is strong enough to hold together two independent clauses:
| The World Trade Center towers were completed in 1973; they were the tallest buildings in the world for only one year. |
Finally, two independent clauses can be combined into a compound sentence, using a conjunction such as and, or, nor, but, yet, so, or for.
| The Petronas Towers are 1,483 feet tall they each have 88 stories. |
| The Empire State Building is not as tall as the Petronas Towers it has 102 floors. |
These sentences can be fixed by using a conjunction plus a comma to tie them together:
| The Petronas Towers are both 1,483 feet tall, and they each have 88 stories. |
| The Empire State Building is not as tall as the Petronas Towers, yet it has 102 floors! |
Fixing run-on sentences makes your writing more elegant and easier for your readers to understand.