My students in ninth grade tend to write three simple sentences in a row. In essays on the play Antigone, they might write: Creon defied the god, he forbade Antigone from burying her brother and she was sentenced to death. i mark this wrong as run on sentences. Am I correct?
***** NOT A TEACHER *****
************************
Ms. Nevsky,
(1) We non-teachers are allowed to post if we warn everybody at the
start, so that they have the option of skipping this post.
(2) I congratulate you on teaching ninth graders. That is quite a
"challenge."
(3) I am sure that you already know the following. I did
not, until I
started doing some research for this post:
The current was swift, he could not swim to the shore.
(This is technically a "comma splice.")
The current was swift he could not swim to the shore.
(This is technically a "fused sentence" because it
runs together with no punctuation.)
Credit for this info: Hodges & Whitten, Harbrace College Handbook
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972), p. 33.
The famous usage expert Bryan A. Garner agrees that nowadays it is
just easier to use the term "run-on sentence" to describe a comma splice or fused sentence.
(P.S. You never know when you will get a very clever student who tries to
embarrass you by using those terms!!!)
*****
(4) As one of our presidents used to say: I feel your pain. If a student
asks you whether that sentence is a run-on sentence or not, you --
as the teacher -- have to say YES or NO.
(5) I most respectfully and humbly believe that you should say:
"Yes, it is a run-on sentence. Kindly rewrite it."
(6) To simplify matters, let's end that sentence with "brother":
Creon defied the god, he forbade Antigone from burying her brother.
There are some people who could justify that sentence. But you
are dealing with ninth graders. They need a simple YES or NO. I think
most teachers would definitely classify that as a so-called run-on
sentence. I learned in my research that adults often have a sincere
difference of opinion. For example, the late William Safire wrote a
English usage column for
The New York Times. He once said gave this
example of a run-on:
You don't do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time.
Another "expert" respectfully disagreed with him. That other expert
explained: The sentence is punctuated correctly with a comma because
there is a parallel between the two independent clauses.
My point: All the other posters have given you excellent advice. Their
advice is
undoubtedly correct and should be followed. But I believe
that the sentence you cited should be classified as a run-on.
It is not something that you want ninth graders to write. When they
get older, that may be a different thing.
(Source for Mr. Safire's sentence:
Let a Simile [not
smile] Be Your
Umbrella (New York: Crown Publishers, 2001), p. 271)
(7) Finally, I found another example to consider. It
comes from Ms. Karen Elizabeth Gordon's
The Transitive Vampire/A
Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed
(New York: Times Books, 1984), p.112. She calls this a run-on:
One way to find a sweetheart is to put an ad in the paper,
another is to wait and see what the cat drags in.
I can well understand why many adults might find this sentence
acceptable, but the "rules" call it "wrong," and that is what
ninth graders should probably be taught.
THANK YOU
