Writing Skills

A run-on sentence occurs when two independent clauses run together without proper punctuation or appropriate conjunctions.

Decide what the main purpose of the sentence is, then choose one of the following methods to rewrite the sentence for clarity.

Divide the clauses into two sentences by inserting a period between them.

• INCORRECT: Terry came home from school she worked on her homework.
• CORRECT: Terry came come from school.  She worked on her homework.

Insert a semicolon between them, if the two clauses are very closely related.

• INCORRECT: Terry came home from school she worked on her homework.
• CORRECT: Terry came come from school; she worked on her homework.

Use a comma with a coordinating conjunction to separate the clauses. The coordinating conjunctions are: and, but, or, so, for, yet, nor.

• INCORRECT: Terry came home from school she worked on her homework.
• CORRECT: Terry came come from school, and she worked on her homework.

Add a subordinating conjunction to make one sentence out of the two clauses. Some subordinating conjunctions are: when, while, because, as, although, if, though, since

• INCORRECT: Lincoln watched Doom Patrol he did his homework.
• CORRECT: Lincoln watched Doom Patrol while he did his homework.