What are run-ons and fused sentences?
Run-on or fused sentences consist of two or more grammatically complete sentences welded together against their will. At first glance, they may not even seem like separate sentences; read them aloud, however, and they scream out in agony: Quite some time had passed since Spink Lowden played baseball his friend Hucklebean Snowgoose stayed close to the game by gambling but he too hadn’t played in years. Hoo haa. It’s a doozy all right. Did you find yourself losing any sense of rhythm and shape inside this construction? If your own writing goes something like this, don’t worry: punctuation is free and will clear the problem up in no time. • Punctuate it! • Rewrite it! • Compress it!
