Monday, May 16, 2005

What's a Run-On? How Do I Stop It From Running On?

A run-on sentence is a grammatical error in which more than one complete thought is joined without an appropriate connecting words or punctuation mark. Here are two tips for avoiding run-on sentences: read the sentences aloud or learn the rules. Let’s take these tips one at a time.


Reading Aloud
Read your sentences aloud to hear how they will sound. Look at this example of a run-on:


I didn’t find the invoice on the photocopier I found it on the shredder.
In speaking the above statement, most of us naturally do one of two things after uttering the word photocopier: pause or change our pitch. The slower speakers actually pause. The faster speakers change pitch, momentarily shifting their intonation. Therefore, some punctuation is necessary.

We have a number of options in correcting this run-on sentence. Here are five:

  1. I didn’t find the invoice on the photocopier. I found it on the shredder.
  2. I didn’t find the invoice on the photocopier; I found it on the shredder.
  3. I didn’t find the invoice on the photocopier, but I found it on the shredder.
  4. You said that I found the invoice on the photocopier, but I found it on the shredder.
  5. Although I didn’t find the invoice on the photocopier, I did find it on the shredder.

Learning the Rules


Of course, some of us speak so fast that we do not hear a rate or a pitch change. With all due respect to fast talkers (I sometimes wish I had that skill), those people are generally more difficult to understand. They need to learn the rules, so here we go:


A sentence must express a complete thought. It must have a subject and a predicate.
  • The subject is the who or what the sentence is about.
  • The predicate is what is said about the subject.
Example: Managers train.


Subject? ManagersPredicate? train


A sentence may have also have the following parts:
  • object complements to indicate the receiver of the action by the simple predicate
  • modifiers to describe the meaning of another word
  • connectives, such as prepositions and conjunctions, to join sentence parts
  • independent elements, which are expressions that have no grammatical connection with the sentence in which they appear.
Examples (sentence part in italics):


object complements: Managers train staff.

modifiers: The managers often train new staff.

connectives: The managers often train and assign new staff for the factory.

independent elements: The managers, Phil believes, often train and assign new staff for the factory.



Many useful resources are available on this subject. This blog lists a few, so check them out!