Sentence Errors

ENG302 : The Class : The Process : Final Preparation : Sentence Errors
Sentence Errors

SENTENCE ERRORS

Probably the two most common grammatical errors at the sentence level are the run-on sentence (or comma splice) and its opposite, the fragment.

Comma Splice
A run-on sentence squeezes two full sentences together as one, often joining them with a comma (hence the term comma splice):

The oil rig blew up, the explosion killed twenty men.

As this example shows, in a run-on sentence, a separate subject and verb appear on both sides of the comma. Conceptually, two related but distinct ideas are run together.

The comma splice may be corrected in many ways. As usual, the right correction depends on the rhetorical situation. Most simply, the comma can be replaced by a period:

The oil rig blew up. The explosion killed twenty men.

This version emphasizes the separateness of the two sentences, which is fine if the two events are separate, or the writer wants to make them seem as separate as possible. if, however, the two events are closely related and the author wants to stress that relationship, the period makes the passage choppy, or lacking coherence. A semicolon emphasizes the relationship between the sentences:

The oil rig blew up; the explosion killed twenty men.

This semicolon implies a close, but not necessarily causal, relationship between the two sentences.

Still another approach to run-on sentences is to change one of the two into a dependent clause:

When the oil rig blew up, the explosion killed twenty men.

The oil rig blew up in an explosion that killed twenty men.

In the first example, the writer emphasizes the explosion killing the men by putting that idea in an independent sentence and de-emphasizes the oil rig blowing up by placing that idea in a dependent clause. In the second example, the writer achieves the opposite emphasis by placing oil rig in the independent sentence and linking explosion to the dependent clause. The right emphasis can only be determined from the rhetorical context.

Finally, other improvements to the run-on sentence combine the two original sentences into one sentence by changing one into a dependent phrase:

The oil rig's blowing up killed twenty men.

The oil rig blew up, killing twenty men.

Twenty men were killed in the oil rig explosion.

The alternatives are numerous. The good writer quickly goes beyond
repairing a comma splice to generating alternatives in order to make the most effective choice. In other words, for the effective writer, correctness is never the only issue, or even the main issue, in choosing the final language. Too many correct possibilities exist to base the final choice only on correctness.

Fragment
The fragment is just the opposite of the comma splice. It is less than a full sentence and hence often fails to express a complete thought:

The exploding oil rig. (No verb)

Killed twenty men. (No subject)

As these examples indicate, the fragment usually lacks either a subject or a verb and can be made into a sentence by adding the missing part:

The exploding oil rig killed twenty men.

The explosion killed twenty men.

Another type of sentence fragment has both a subject and a verb, but puts them in a dependent clause starting off with a word such as while, during or although:

While the rig exploded.

Although twenty men were killed.

These fragments can be corrected by deleting the opening word:

The rig exploded.

Twenty men were killed.

However, this approach usually results in choppy sentences, as the two examples illustrate.

A better solution is to add a sentence to the fragment to complete the idea:

When the rig exploded, the emergency crew was resting on shore.

Although twenty men were killed, forty others escaped unharmed.

Thus, a comma splice is in effect two sentences, while a fragment is in effect a partial sentence. As with the comma splice, writers can correct the fragment in many different ways. To find the right one, the writer generates many alternatives and then carefully compares them against the demands of the rhetorical situation and against each other.

E-mail Greg Larkin at Gregory.Larkin@nau.edu
or call (520) 523-4911

Web site created by the NAU OTLE Faculty Studio