The Skillful Quill: Dragging Your Reader Through the Mud or Leading Them To Treasure?

This sentence, despite its ridiculous length and all the useless things it has to say, with its added phrases and clauses that have no content and give you nothing but extra words, that feels like it should be a run on because it’s so freaking long and is as boring as a sentence is allowed to be—even though it’s a little ironically funny in that it keeps babbling while saying nothing—and maybe makes you feel like pulling out your hair, is not a run on sentence and is one hundred percent grammatically correct.

This sentence is incorrect it is a run on.

This sentence is also incorrect, it is also a run on.

Really? ‘Tis true. The first sentence is a run on because it is two complete sentences put together with no conjunction, no semi-colon, no period—nothing to indicate the end of a sentence.

The second sentence is a special (and annoyingly common) run on called a comma splice: two sentences “spliced” together with a comma.

Because here’s the thing: “run-on” doesn’t mean long; it means you’ve got two sentences you smashed together, even if they are two tiny sentences.

The Skillful Quill: That Dastardly Comma

Hello Fellow Writers!

Today’s topic: the dreaded comma. I’m beginning with this as my first post because I find, as a teacher anyway, that commas seem to mystify many. Writers tend to either have comma-phobia (don’t know if there’s a real term) and avoid them almost completely—or they have a serious romantic relationship with commas, and put them, everywhere, there’s a possibility, they might, be able to go. (FYI: grammar check doesn’t think that sentence has any errors…)

Frankly, I don’t think teachers really discuss the purpose of punctuation—including the comma. We don’t use punctuation when we speak, but when we write, we can’t use inflections, pauses, emphases, drama. We’re stuck with what written language can do, thus the need for punctuation. Punctuation is our friend, there to help our text make sense and be clear.

And the comma? It has one use: to separate for clarity. That’s it. Find a sentence with a comma anywhere (well, anywhere that’s using it correctly) and you’ll see it do its work.

And there are only four kinds of texts that need separation: items in a list, complete sentences joined with a conjunction, “conventions” like city and state or name and title, and “what you can take out” (introductory phrases and appositives).

Yep, that’s it. Just four. Some examples may help make this more clear.

Along Came Mary

I remember the first time I met Mary Wendt. Sara and I had managed, although she was a year ahead of me at Alma, to land ourselves in the same Sociology 101 class. I say managed like it wasn't purposeful, but it was; our making friends with Mary, however, was purely by accident. She sat next to us the first day of class, and after that first day, we returned to the same seats, delighted to find Mary had returned to the same seat as well. Although Mary was a non-traditional student whose life experience was far greater than our own, we thought of her as no different than us, and we soon fell in love with her pleasant smile and witty charm, quick to call her friend.

Throughout my time at Alma College, Mary and I had a number of English and Composition classes together—my favorite, perhaps, being our shared poetry class with Ms. Catherine Swender, which gave us the opportunity to work with distinguished poets such as Lucille Clifton and Sonia Sanchez. Our love of literature and our shared views on life soon sealed our fates as life-long friends.