Is this sentence grammatically correct?

Question

My little brother wrote an essay and sent it in to his school website. The essays are student-reviewed, and the girl who reviewed his essay claimed that the following sentence was a run-on sentence. My mom thinks that it is not a run-on sentence, but still grammatically incorrect. For context, it was a narrative essay he wrote about getting tickets to a concert.

"I had a plan - I would show my parents the venue, show them the price of the tickets, try to tell them how much this meant to me, and see what they thought."

Are there any grammatical errors? If so, how would you rewrite the sentence to be grammatically correct?

Answer 1

I would not say that this sentence is a run-on, or that is technically incorrect. However, it can be improved in terms of clarity and flow. A run-on is not simply a long sentence. It occurs when two or more sentences are linked without proper punctuation. For example: "the woman had a cat and a dog both of them were very friendly." Notice that I have two sentences merged together without punctuation.

As for your brother's sentence, I would change the hyphen to an emdash or colon. A hyphen isn't used in cases like these.

I had a plan:

OR

I had a plan--

Furthermore, I believe that the confusion regarding the list that follows is the variation in verbs that your brother is using: "show, show, try, and see." I don't think there is a problem with the way he has punctuated the sentence, but it could definitely be re-structured to make it more clear. Here is how I would rewrite it:

I had a plan: I would show my parents the venue and the price of the tickets, try to tell them how much

the concert meant to me, and see what they thought.

Answer 2

I had a plan - I would show my parents the venue; show them the price of the tickets; try to tell them how much this meant to me and see what they thought.

Insert two semi-colons where you used a comma and delete the comma before "and" in the last phrase. It is always incorrect to use a comma before a conjunction unless there is an explicate subject, which there is not.

Answer 3

Consider looking up parallel structure and the proper use of the hyphen in sentences . I think reviewing the proper use of semi-colons/commas might also be useful. Below are two links that may be helpful.

Parallel Structure: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/mechanics/parallel_structure.htm

Hyphen: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/punctuation/hyphen_use.html

Semicolon vs. Commas: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/punctuation/commas/commas_vs_semicolons.html