This sucks

[Maurk]

There has been entire essays written in just one sentence.. Wish I had an example to show,
but when I was in college my english instructor showed the class an essay that was literally one sentence (maybe 2000 words, nothing huge).
Point is if you know correct punctuation, you wont ever need those fucking periods.

[fishingme]

Have you tried shaving?

[Fourthmeal]

The comma is your friend

[Sykem]

http://www.myenglishteacher.net/runonsentences.html

[Messianic]

Find one of your friends who's good at writing, and let them own your paper with a red pen. It'll help you a ton.

[Reynard_CT]

get Strunk's "little book" The Elements of Style

[rioisk]

Something I've learned - grammar is bullshit - nobody follows correct grammar anymore.

[Aasimon]

Originally Posted by Ishio [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

No matter what I do or try to do, I always have this issue where I have run on sentences. It sucks. I've tried everything to try and change this, but I just can't seem to shake the bad habit. Does anyone have an suggestions on ways to improve this?

Read your material aloud and insert punctuation where you pause (comma), or take a breath (period). If you insert a comma between two related things that could be a sentence if separated, use a semicolon.

[Kassel]

Read your paper sentence by sentence backwards.

[Hasbinbad]

Originally Posted by Ishio [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

No matter what I do or try to do, I always have this issue where I have run on sentences. It sucks. I've tried everything to try and change this, but I just can't seem to shake the bad habit. Does anyone have an suggestions on ways to improve this?

Where I see the issue occur, is when I'm writing papers for homework. I just got back my last paper and got marked off big time for run on's, and for not breaking a typography standard which is you can indent OR page break but not both. She said I have to do both for English writing assignments, though it's for Psychology, but I informed her my Typography teacher said that's not the norm for typography and grid designers.

It's simple dude. Sentences are symbolic of one complete thought. Use commas and conjunctions only when you have to, and don't rely on them for "pauses." A semi colon joins two separate and complete thoughts that are tied together; a conjunction is not used with a semi colon.

Formulate your main thoughts before you start writing. One or two key words, with a period at the end, thus:

dog walk. downtown. really hot. red dress. embarrassed. this is awesome, thx.

Then you can flesh that out:

I took my dog for a walk today. We went a lot of places, but ended up downtown for most of the time. It must have been over 100 degrees, because even my dog was sweating. Right before we headed back, this gorgeous woman in a red dress tripped and almost fell right in front of us. She seemed very embarrassed. This writing tutorial is freaking awesome, thanks Hasbinbad!

While all of those sentences are mostly grammatically correct, none of them are very interesting. But* they could all be fleshed out again if you really wanted to use this example as a demonstration of skill:

It was cold this morning, but I decided to take scrappy for a walk in spite of Mother Nature's apparent disdain for my comfort. We traveled for miles before ending up downtown; Scrappy needed to be absolutely sure that every heated bitch in the known world had his scent, "just in case." It was as hot as a two dollar whore on the fourth of July, and even Scraps was sweating bullets when we were ready to go home, when right out of the blue something long and red caught my peripheral. I knelt down to "tie my shoe" as she passed, mirage-like, only to snap sharply back to reality seconds later as she tripped over her own feet just in front of where I knelt. She looked around, saw that I saw, and blushed furiously as she quickly turned and walked away. This writing tutorial has taught me a whole lot about how to build sentences if I constantly have problems with run-ons, and I feel like I have more confidence to not only choose a subject for each sentence - and stick with it, but also to flesh out boring-seeming sentences while sticking to the the topic of that particular sentence; thanks Hasbinbad, I don't know what I would do without your benevolent guidance!

So before all you wanna be grammar police out there start picking apart what I just did, let me remind you that the point is to help someone curb their run-on use. These sentences may not follow every rule, but they do serve to illustrate a point.

*This is me trying out using a conjunction to start a sentence. U like my dope styles, amirite?