Each year, I ask my students to recount the three components of a complete sentence. Most immediately tell me the first two: a subject and a verb. But few remember the third and most important requirement: the complete thought.
Sentences are our thoughts in statement form and cannot exist without a complete idea behind them. In the forward to my book, Susan Wise Bauer explains, “Writing is an incredibly hard skill to teach, because writing is thinking.” Understanding when a thought is complete versus incomplete is the most challenging and crucial part of writing clear and descriptive sentences.
In this article, I will explain how people can better understand the complete thought of their sentences in order to avoid run on sentences.
The difference between a complete sentence and an incomplete one is sometimes just a word. For example: “She swims.” This is a complete sentence. It of course has the required subject and verb. More importantly, we all understand exactly what is happening here. The reader isn’t left hanging. It might be a boring sentence, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t complete.
If we change it to: “When she swims.” Our complete sentence (often called an independent clause by professional pedants like myself) is ruined. While it has the same subject and verb, the thought is incomplete. We are left wondering “what happens?” as if the writer has been distracted mid-sentence. The key to writing clear sentences is knowing when the addition or subtraction of a word pushes the sentence from complete to incomplete territory and vice versa.
When we write, we rarely use two word sentences. “She swims” is complete, but not very informative. Complete sentences can be made more interesting and informative through the addition of phrases: “She swims quickly with her pink goggles.”
Let’s break down into meaningful parts (where each part adds a new detail or idea to the original sentence): “She swims | quickly | with her pink goggles.” Notice how none of the phrases express a new complete thought with a subject or verb. Instead, they elaborate on the original simple sentence. The complete sentence is the core, and one can add description and interest through phrases and additional words so long as we don’t introduce a new complete thought.
To link or build more complete thoughts in a sentence, you can use two structures: compound sentence structures and complex sentence structures. Compound sentences are when you merge two simple sentences with a conjunction of some sort.
- I usually prefer mysteries, but I’ll occasionally read science fiction. (coordinating conjunction)
- Running in the morning helps keep you energized throughout the day because it ignites your metabolism. (subordinating conjunction)
Complex sentences come from the addition of a dependent clause to a complete sentence. “When she swims” is a dependent clause because it depends on more information to make sense–we need more information to know what happens when she swims. Dependent clauses are tricky because they contain a subject and verb. Crucially they don’t express a complete thought. Relying on just these two structures might seem limiting, but they offer endless permutations and phrasing variations.
You can combine types of sentences, sentence parts, and clauses together to create detailed sentences in your writing. Here are some examples:
- “Threading her way through the Ninsei crowds, he could smell his own stale sweat.” – William Gibson, Neuromancer
- “He remembers watching the moisture pearl on his bedroom window, the crows lining the curved white rail of his veranda.” – Karen Russel, Vampires in the Lemon Grove
In each of these sentences, dependent clauses or descriptive phrases are used to elaborate on the characteristics of a subject, the action, or scene in the core independent clause:
- “Threading her way through the Ninsei crowds, he could smell his own stale sweat.” – William Gibson, Neuromancer
- “He remembers watching the moisture pearl on his bedroom window, the crows lining the curved white rail of his veranda.” – Karen Russel, Vampires in the Lemon Grove
Notice that each of these descriptive phrases could almost stand on their own as independent clauses if we just added a word or two, often a form of “to be”:
- He remembers watching the moisture pearl on his bedroom window, the crows were lining the curved white rail of his veranda
When adding more to your sentence, it is essential that your descriptive phrases and dependent clauses do not read as complete sentences.
In short, run-on sentences happen when you have two or more independent clauses that are not joined together correctly. People usually create run ons not because they don’t know when to stop their sentences–it is rare I see sentences that just will not end–but rather when they accidentally add a single word or phrase that changes the clause from a dependent clause to a complete sentence.
This type of mistake will usually result in a comma splice or fused sentences. A fused sentence is when two sentences are back to back with no grammatical transition:
- He remembers watching the moisture pearl on his bedroom window the crows were lining the curved white rail of his veranda.
A comma splice is when a comma doing its best to hold two independent clauses together, but doesn’t have additional phrasing support:
- He remembers watching the moisture pearl on his bedroom window, the crows were lining the curved white rail of his veranda.
When you’ve written a run-on, don’t panic. There is usually a much easier fix than scrapping the sentence and starting again. Typically, a writer can apply one of four solutions to fix their run on.
1. One of the easiest ways to fix a run on, and particularly a comma splice, is to add a conjunction between the two independent clauses directly following the comma.
- Run on: On the floor lay an old white English bull terrier, its head was resting on one of the man’s feet.
- Fixed: On the floor lay an old white English bull terrier, and its head was resting on one of the man’s feet.
While commas are the Swiss Army knife of punctuation, they cannot hold two sentences together. But, with the simple addition of a conjunction, the two elements form a strong glue for your independent clauses, best explained by Tarisa Folaron in her “Comma Story.”
2. Another quick fix is to add a semicolon or, in the case of a comma splice, replace the comma with a semicolon:
- On the floor lay an old white English bull terrier; its head was resting on one of the man’s feet.
While commas cannot hold two sentences together, the semicolon’s whole job is to connect two related independent clauses. However, the two clauses must have a clear connection to one another, without the need of transition, for the semicolon to work best. If more connection is needed, a conjunctive adverb like “however” or “therefore” can be added after the semicolon.
3. For either a comma splice or fused sentence, another simple solution is to “subordinate” the clause, which is a fancy way to say: “make one of the independent clauses dependent” or “rephrase to a descriptive phrase.” Often times, this means removing a “to be” verb, creating a participle or absolute phrase. So in the case of our example sentences, we’d just remove that “were” or “was”:
- He remembers watching the moisture pearl on his bedroom window, the crows were lining the curved white rail of his veranda.
- He remembers watching the moisture pearl on his bedroom window, the crows lining the curved white rail of his veranda.
4. Lastly, if none of the other solutions fix the sentence, separating the run on into multiple sentences is always an option. Not every sentence in your writing needs to be long and detailed. Adding short, simple sentences to the mix can add texture and make your writing more interesting to read.
While run on sentences seem daunting, a few minor corrections to the sentence phrasing can take too many thoughts strung together to a neat, complete statement with vivid description.
– Kayla Meyers