Fragments and
Run-ons: How Far and Why
Many pundits,
politicians, and parents have been complaining for at least two
decades now about the unfortunate low-level of the “average”
person’s reading and writing ability. They are concerned with
many workers’ deficiency in effective written communication;
ditto for reading comprehension. Even President Bush in his 2004
State of the Union speech wondered out loud if it was too much to
ask a third grade student to read at third grade level. One could
also wonder why many colleges and universities have to offer
remedial writing classes to students who should have acquired
their writing skills in junior or senior high school.
Which of
course brings up the problem with the ubiquity of the audio, oral
forms of communication, and of our culture’s immersion in
electronic media. It should therefore not be a surprise that the
heavy reliance on the oral aspects of discourse has greatly
influenced the manner in which a good number of individuals do
their writing. That is to say, not a small number of those who
attempt to write, whether creatively or academically or on the
business level, tend to write the way they “hear” sentences. And
thus, the unintentional use or overuse of sentence fragments and
run-ons.
The question,
however, could be asked, what does it matter how I put my
sentences together as long as you get my drift. That is like
saying what does it matter how I drive down the road, as long as
I get where I am going. In creative or journalistic writing,
sentence fragments, which could grammatically be defined as
sentences that lack a clear subject, or where a verb—or a main
verb-- is missing, may have a place. If we look at the last
sentence of the preceding paragraph, we note that the sentence
lacks both a subject and a verb. A strict grammarian may object
to the construction of the sentence, claiming that the reader is
not told who indulges in the overuse of fragments; and
there is no central verb. Yet, in the context of the paragraph,
that sentence fragment might be quite acceptable. It all
depends.
In most
creative forms of writing, a certain number of grammatically
incomplete sentences is certainly allowed. This is true in types
and manners of dialogue, in stream of consciousness passages, and
in contexts where the emotions of the narrator-- probably
excluding the omniscient point of view narration—are more central
than the manner of description. Therefore, we can state that
there should be a good, justifiable reason for reliance on
fragments. But more often these days, whether in formal writing,
creative writing, and more frequently in journalistic writing, we
come across instances of fragment use and abuse.
The case with
the misuse of run-on or comma splice sentences is more clear. For
there is less excuse for such incorrectness. Unless you are
British and writing for British readers, since ironically there
is more acceptance of comma splice use in even formal written
forms in British English. We in the United States adhere to more
strict punctuation rules in distinguishing ends of sentences and
beginnings of new, complete sentences. Unlike the possibilities
of fragment use in creative writing, there should be a darn
good reason
for resorting
to run-ons of any sort. Readers, and of course editors, seem to
be less forgiving of this writing peculiarity, which has become
somewhat common, again as a result of the
“don’t-bother-me-with-punctuation” elements of the oral, auditory
forces.
By Bruce
Nassiri Kermane
