What makes a sentence a run-on? Can reading the sentence aloud help?

Question

My friend said that she has to take a breath in the middle of a long sentence and that makes it a run-on. Is that correct? How do I know if it is a run-on sentence?

Answer 1

That might help, but I wouldn't define a run-on sentence by whether or not you need to take a breath in the middle of it. I define a run-on sentence as two or more complete thoughts put together without proper punctuation or conjunctions.

Here is an example of a run-on sentence:

"I went to my friend's house, we had fun."

This is a run-on sentence because "I went to my friend's house" and "we had fun" are both complete thoughts, i.e. having both a subject and a predicate, but they are only separated with a comma, which is grammatically incorrect. You could correct this run-on sentence in multiple ways:

... with a conjunction (e.g. "and," "but," "so"):

"I went to my friend's house, and we had fun."

... with a period:

"I went to my friend's house. We had fun."

... or with a semicolon:

"I went to my friend's house; we had fun." Note that semicolons are used to indicate a connection between two thoughts, so don't use them willy-nilly in place of any old period.

I hope this helps. Ultimately, the breath thing might be a useful writing tip, but it alone does not define a run-on sentence. You can have a long-winded sentence with a lot of clauses, but as long as its clauses are linked together with the proper grammar, it is not a run-on sentence.

Answer 2

One common way of telling whether or not a sentence is a run-on is by reading it outloud. If you need to pause before the sentence is done, it's likely a run-on.

To more specifically describe a run-on, it is where a sentence is overly long without breaks, such as commas and semicolons.

Answer 3

I would say that a run-on sentence has less to do with how long it is but more to with whether or not it consists of two or more complete thoughts or sentences without the necessary punctuation. Remember, a complete thought or sentence only needs to have a subject and a verb. This can be two words; therefore, a run-on sentence could consist of only 4 words. The following is an example:

I called she answered. The first complete thought/sentence is "I called" and the second complete thought/sentence is "she answered. The correction to for this run-on sentence is "I called, and she answered."

Hope that helps.