…RUN-ON SENTENCES…

WH A T A R E T H E Y , A N D H O W

C A N WE A V O I D T H E M ?

LET’S DO THE SENTENCE TEST!

…with two quotes from Liliana Heker’s “The Stolen Party” (p. 111):

• “she even managed the jug of orange juice”

• “carrying it from the kitchen into the dining room”

LET’S DO THE SENTENCE TEST!

Now let’s join those two clauses together and see if that makes a valid sentence:

• “she even managed the jug of orange juice carrying it from the kitchen into the dining room”

So, the complete sentence should be:

• “She even managed the jug of orange juice, carrying it from the kitchen into the dining room.”

WHERE IS THE INDEPENDENT CLAUSE?

Here’s a more complex sentence from “The Stolen Party” (p. 111):

• “Before going out, Rosaura admired herself in the mirror, with her white dress and glossy hair, and thought she looked terribly pretty.”

Let’s underline the independent clauses.

USING COMMAS LIKE CAMERAS

Think of the punctuation like a video camera, gliding across a scene, zooming in to get a close up of the details.

USING COMMAS LIKE CAMERASI’ve removed all of the commas from the following passage from “A & P.” Can you put them back in the right spots?

• Looking back in the big windows over the bags of peat moss and aluminum lawn furniture stacked on the pavement I could see Lengel in my place in the slot checking the sheep through.

USING COMMAS LIKE CAMERAS

Did you get it right?• “Looking back in the big windows, over the bags of peat

moss and aluminum lawn furniture stacked on the pavement, I could see Lengel in my place in the slot, checking the sheep through” – “A& P”

Now try using commas like cameras: write a complex sentence which starts with an independent clause, and then add one or two dependent clauses with extra details.

DO COMMAS ALWAYS WORK? (NO.)Commas aren’t always enough to build a complex sentence correctly. Let’s put commas to the test with one of our own sentences:

• “Rosaura is going to his house after she realizes that she is a helper she decides to make her skill a job so she can get money.”

DO COMMAS ALWAYS WORK? (NO.)I have replaced all of the punctuation from the following passage from “Powder” with commas. Let’s see if you can tell which commas don’t measure up.

• A state trooper waved us down outside the resort, a pair of sawhorses were blocking the road, the trooper came up to our car and bent down to my father’s window, his face was bleached by the cold, snowflakes clung to his eyebrows and to the fur trim of his jacket and cap.

CONNECTOR WORDS AND PUNCTUATION• Connector words (always preceded by a comma)

“and” (similar words: “as well as”) Example: “Before going out, Rosaura admired herself in the mirror, with her white dress

and glossy hair, and thought she looked terribly pretty.” – “The Stolen Party” “but” (similar words: “although”; “even though”)

Example: “The fat one with the tan sort of fumbled with the cookies, but on second thought she put the packages back.” – “A & P”

• Punctuation that lets you skip the connector words: period (when you want to keep the two thoughts separate)

Example: “The jar went heavy in my hand. Really, I thought that was so cute.” – “A & P” semicolon (when you want to keep the two thoughts combined)

Example: “‘I guess,’ I said, but no guesswork was required; she wouldn’t forgive him.”-- “Powder”

colon (when you want to use one thought to introduce or explain the other)Example: "Rosaura blinked hard: she wasn’t going to cry.” – “The Stolen Party”

GRAMMAR RULE #2

A run-on sentence is created when two or more independent clauses are placed together without proper punctuation or connector words.

LET’S DO THE RUN-ON SENTENCE TEST!The following example is a piece of our own writing. Does it use punctuation and connector words properly?

• “In the story ‘The Stolen Party’ the maid’s daughter, Rosaura, thought she was friends with her mom’s employee’s daughter, Luciana, Rosaura thought they were equals but in reality they were not.”

LET’S DO THE RUN-ON SENTENCE TEST!Possible corrections:

• “In the story ‘The Stolen Party’ the maid’s daughter, Rosaura, thought she was friends with her mom’s employee’s daughter, Luciana. Rosaura thought they were equals but in reality they were not.”

• “In the story ‘The Stolen Party’ the maid’s daughter, Rosaura, thought she was friends with her mom’s employee’s daughter, Luciana; Rosaura thought they were equals but in reality they were not.”