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I am in dire need of help!!!!! No matter how hard I try,I just cannot be rid of run-on sentences. Does anyone have any helpful tips? I'm desperate!.

Think of it like this: don’t join two ideas together. Use short sentences. Full stop.

You might try printing out your review, then marking it up with a red pen. Draw a line between different ideas so you can see the problem. I am a visual person so it helped when I was able to see the red lines; I could see how many different ideas were being combined into one sentence.

Once you see the distinct ideas you can decide how to rewrite things. But for me, I needed to see all the red marks on the paper in order to fully understand the problem.

Depending on your comfort with grammar, you can try marking subjects and verbs in your sentences and checking for when a new subject and verb come. At that point, you now probably have two clauses and a potential run-on. You can decide what to do with the new subject and verb. Marking with red as history100 suggests could help.

I have trouble with run-on sentences. I am going to try your idea on my next review. I also had 2 errors with capitalizing a profession when followed by the person's name. e.g. Professor Jon Evans. I used every grammar checker I could, 15 or more, and not one of them found those errors. I just looked Grammar ad capitalizing and found the Blue Book of Grammar online. It clearly had those rules stated. https://www.grammarbook.com/contact.asp

One of the tricks I found useful was if I needed to take a breath when reading something out loud, then it might be time for a period. If you aren't able to read it aloud and are reading it silently, when your mind pauses it might be time for a period.

Can you give us some examples? It world be easier to help if we could see exactly what it is you're doing.

I'm glad you're asking for help. The last two books I've reviewed have suffered greatly from compound sentence errors (current book has 10 in the first chapter).

Know your FANBOYS and what they separate. If there is a complete thought before and after one, it needs punctuation. For both your sake, and for your reader's sake, try not to combine any more than two complete thoughts in a single sentence unless it is describing simultaneous action from multiple characters.

If you are not sure you have separate thoughts, put a period between, and see if it makes sense.

I would be able to give more specific advice if I had specific examples of how your run-on sentences typically look. I can, however, say that when I was in college, my professors would encourage us to take a break from the writing (just a day or so, so that your brain is less likely to remember what you meant to write and automatically read it as such) and then go back to read it out loud. That way, we could hear exactly how the sentences flowed. Plus, if it's physically difficult to read a sentence, it will be more obvious how to divide that sentence to make it flow naturally speech-wise.

Do your long sentences consist of a lot of short phrases? If so, you can break them with commas or full-stops.

There's nothing wrong with using a ton of commas in one long sentence as long as the sentence is still structured properly.

When in doubt, use a comma. If there's too many commas, break the sentence. Like this. I'm still not 100% sure on when to apply a semicolon. The rules seem to have changed since I left school. I was taught to never start a sentence with 'and' or 'but' yet plenty of books do. Paragraphs used to be spaced with indents. Now they aren't and a written letter looks wrong to me without it.

It would be better trying to read your sentence aloud. That will help you decide when to cut it off and start a new. Furthermore, when you change subject, althought connected from the first one, I would suggest you separate those into two sentences.

slj3988 wrote: ↑08 Jan 2020, 15:34 When in doubt, use a comma. If there's too many commas, break the sentence. Like this. I'm still not 100% sure on when to apply a semicolon. The rules seem to have changed since I left school. I was taught to never start a sentence with 'and' or 'but' yet plenty of books do. Paragraphs used to be spaced with indents. Now they aren't and a written letter looks wrong to me without it.

Did you grow up in the US? I have the same problem but I thought it was because I learned British English rules.

RachelEmmanuel wrote: ↑04 Jul 2020, 22:07

slj3988 wrote: ↑08 Jan 2020, 15:34 When in doubt, use a comma. If there's too many commas, break the sentence. Like this. I'm still not 100% sure on when to apply a semicolon. The rules seem to have changed since I left school. I was taught to never start a sentence with 'and' or 'but' yet plenty of books do. Paragraphs used to be spaced with indents. Now they aren't and a written letter looks wrong to me without it.

Did you grow up in the US? I have the same problem but I thought it was because I learned British English rules.

No I live in England. I recently retook my English GCSE and the tutor told me "Your writing, your rules." School taught me different rules. What doesn't help is Microsoft Word. Even though it accepts both english and american, my reviews get flagged on here for errors. Usually over where to use a hyphen.