The Endlessly Running Sentences

Have you ever gone for a run or hit the treadmill and reached that point where it feels like your lungs, heart, and legs desperately want to give out? But you keep going because you've almost reached your goal and you can't bear to give up when it's just within reach. You're anticipating that gratifying buzz of accomplishment. But what if, a few meters away from your distance goal, you find that you suddenly have five hundred more meters to go? What if, a few minutes to the end of the timer, your device glitches and adds fifteen more minutes? You might push through and keep going if it happens once, but what if it happens twice, or a third time? Most likely, the joy and exhilaration you felt from that exercise would fly out the window. And that, my friends, is what a run-on sentence feels like.

Run-on sentences, simply put, are sentences where two or more independent clauses (complete sentences that can stand and be understood on their own) are forcibly joined together. More often than not, they are joined by a comma. But even if they aren't, one thing is certain: those sentences do not belong together.

I'll give a quick example:

Her clothes were wrinkled and muddy, she looked and smelt like she had taken a swim in a sewage treatment plant now her only saving grace was the heavy rain that she wished would keep pouring and wash away the grime.

Do you feel out of breath? Because I do. I can also bet that half-way through, you went back to the beginning to make sense of what you just read. That's because the above sentence has three whole independent clauses mashed together. Just when you expected a pause in the words flowing through your mind, you were forced to power on, or you experienced a different kind of pause that felt . . . not quite right. But the magic spell that would have given you that chance to breathe is the most fundamental punctuation mark in all of English language: the full-stop.

Her clothes were wrinkled and muddy. She looked and smelt like she had taken a swim in a sewage treatment plant. Now, her only saving grace was the heavy rain that she wished would keep pouring and wash away the grime.

Each sentence has become distinct from the rest, as they should be, and that makes it much easier for the brain to comprehend the string of letters on the page.

Another common fix to this problem is the comma + conjunction combo. For example:

Her clothes were wrinkled and muddy, and she looked and smelt like she had taken a swim in a sewage treatment plant.

However, I wouldn't recommend that in this scenario because it makes the sentence too difficult to chew. The multiple conjunctions and passive voice are also to blame for that. In that case, there is one final solution that can remedy the run-on sentence we're faced with: the semi-colon.

Her clothes were wrinkled and muddy; she looked and smelt like she had taken a swim in a sewage treatment plant.

The semi-colon can substitute a full-stop, but it shows that the relationship between the sentences is closer than what a period would imply. However, the semi-colon should not be used as a bridge between sentences that are completely unrelated. For example,

Sharon went to trim her hair; she received a call from the hospital.

Perhaps, given the right context, that sentence might work after all. It's also good to note that not all run-on sentences present in the form of missing or inappropriate commas. Some are disguised as sentences bearing rightfully placed conjunctions, when, in fact, those conjunctions are not put to proper use. Here's an example of a sentence with an adverb that serves as a conjunction, a conjunctive adverb:

He was stopped by the police, therefore, he arrived late to the meeting.

These conjunctive adverbs like therefore, thus, however, etc., require a semi-colon if they are used to join two independent clauses. Otherwise, the fragment bearing the conjunctive adverb should become a separate sentence of its own. For example,

He was stopped by the police; therefore, he arrived late to the meeting.

He was stopped by the police. Therefore, he arrived late to the meeting.

Why Do Run-On Sentences Happen?

While run-on sentences appear to be a problem of misused commas, they are in fact a problem of misunderstood sentence structures. Of course, it's easy to stumble when it comes to the comma. Compared to other punctuation marks, there are many more rules regarding its usage, and it boasts an impressive number of exceptions as well. However, you don't need to be a guru on comma rules to deal with run-on sentences. What you need most is the ability to pick out and separate your complete sentences.

The most basic form of a complete sentence is the independent clause, and it can convey an idea all by itself. "Sarah took the dog for a walk." "The captain assigned more troops to the tower." "The royal family declared a ban on magic." All these are independent clauses. Furthermore, they can be joined together to form compound sentences (like in the example above), or they can be paired with dependent clauses to create a complex sentence.

Here are some more examples of compound sentences, and the independent clauses have been underlined.

The hope of the world rested on her shoulders, and she nearly crumbled under it.

New tasks were revealed, but no one dared to be the first to choose.

Harvey studied for years, yet he still couldn't find a cure.

All these were joined by a comma and coordinating conjunction, but it is also possible to use a semi-colon as the glue, like so:

Send a message to her; she will surely respond.

Everyone held their breaths; Amaka wished she could disappear into a hole.

Of course, we can't leave out complex sentences from this parade:

While we waited, the Council launched their investigation.

He had to get home before the monsters appeared.

As before, independent clauses are underlined, while the bolded sections are the dependent clauses. It should be clear now why dependent clauses can't stand on their own. You couldn't walk up to someone and say 'while we waited' and nothing else. They'd be very confused.

These are just the fundamentals on sentence structure. But hopefully, with these in mind, you'd be more proficient at separating or combining different sentence elements, and you'd find it difficult to let run-on sentences slide in your work. Nevertheless, I suspect that another reason run-on sentences happen is an aversion to simple or short sentences. Perhaps it is due to the desire to write long, passionate, and moving sentences. Beautiful sentences. But your entire book can't be full of just that. When used right, those plain sentences can set the mood of a scene and guide the pacing of the story. They can even have the reader feeling like a rock smashed into their chest.

So, dear friends, do not disdain the simple sentence. They are the basis on which those complex, moving, and beautiful sentences are built.

Happy writing!

Your friendly neighborhood editor,

Chiedozi.

P.s., I may have gone a bit overboard with the complex jargon this time. I'd be thrilled to answer your questions if you have any!