Run-On Sentences

Mechanically Inclined-Writer’s Secret

Let’s Review

What does every sentence contain?

A subject (Answers the question….) Who or what did something?

A verb (predicate)(Answers the question…) What did they do?

What does it mean to be dependent?

Who do you depend on to take care of you?

When you get older, you will no longer be dependent. You will stand on your own. That’s the whole point of school-to make you independent.

A sentence…

has to earn its independence by having a subject and a verb and a complete thought.

Sentences are independent Fragments are dependent-they can’t stand

on their own.

Sentence from Winter Birds

They handle the BB gun carelessly.

Is this a sentence? Yes!

Does it have a complete thought? Or does it leave you hanging?

What is the subject? they

What is the verb? handle

Trading it back and forth

Is this a sentence?

What is the subject/verb?

Not a sentence! There is no subject.

“It leaves you hanging.”

These words can’t stand on their own, because they are dependent.

Dependent things can lean on independent things.

They handle the gun carelessly. Independent

trading it back and forth Dependent

Let’s attach trading it back and forth with a comma.

They handle the gun carelessly, trading it back and forth.

We can often attach dependent things that can’t stand on their own to independent things they can lean on.

Shut your eyes Please see the sentence as I read it aloud,

see the way the structures act like a camera, gliding across a scene, getting a close-up of the details. (next slide)

Sentence They handle the BB gun carelessly, trading

it back and forth, each slinging the barrel over his shoulder like a hunter in a frontier television show.

Let’s look at the sentence, up close..

We add pictures to our sentences, and create “movies” by making additions to our sentences without running on.

They handle the BB gun carelessly, trading it back and forth, each slinging the barrel over his shoulder like a hunter in a frontier television show.

Notice how the groups of words are both separated by the commas and held together by them.

Let’s look at some mentor sentences 1. She stands there, staring at the lake, knowing

that her dad is gone forever.

What is dependent?

2. “And Furlough found his brother in the library, standing on top of the great open book, his tail wrapped tightly around his feet, his small body shivering.”

What is dependent?

Writer’s Secret……(shh!)Here is a “comma rule”, which is the basis for

many effective professionally written sentences.

Sentence

, closer

Core sentence + additions attached and grouped with commas

Independent clause (sentence) + dependents