Run-ons and comma splices

Well, we're on to that part of the year when we learn about making our writing sound and look better.  One way to make our writing better is to write complete sentences! :-P  hahahahaha  Yeah, that always helps.  Seriously, though, we want to write nice sentences.

As you remember, we need a subject and a verb to create a complete sentence.  Sometimes, though, we want to create a more complex sentence so we might have two or three different things going on at the same time.  This is great and adds variety to our writing.

The first mistake that we can create is a run-on sentence.  Basically, you are taking two parts of a sentence and smashing them together, but you don't use any kind of joining word.  This looks and sounds bad:

I am happy John is sick.

Are you really that mean that you're happy that your best friend is sick?  No, you just forgot to use a comma or didn't make two sentences.  Let's rewrite that so it's clear:

I am happy, but unfortunately John is sick.

Now, that makes so much more sense.

Next up to bat:  comma splices.  This is the same thing as a run-on, but we end up putting a comma between our two phrases in the sentence.  Once again, this needs a joining word or needs to become two sentences:

Daniel played all day with his parrot, he didn't get his homework done.

To fix this, we'll try both ways:

1) Daniel played all day with his parrot, so he didn't get his homework done.

2) Daniel played all day with his parrot.  He didn't get his homework done.

I tend to like putting commas into the sentence to separate the phrases then add in a joining word.  I think the sentences sound better and they are definitely more complex.

Here are some joining words to use:

And, or, if, but, also, so, expect, while