Run On

Fio's on the rampage again, a grammatical rampage. Every long sentence is not a run-on sentence. Long sentences are perfectly acceptable as--uh--long as they are grammatically correct.

Thus, the longest sentence in the world is grammatically correct: "I saw Harry kiss Mary, Jane, Susan, Linda, Chloe, Zoe . . . . " , with every girl's name in the world listed ad infinitum. It's a simple construction of subject+verb+multiple direct objects.

A run-on sentence is when two sentences are joined together without benefit of clergy: "Harry kissed lots of girls his lips are chapped" or "Harry kissed lots of girls, his lips are chapped." (The latter is often called a "comma splice.") The grammatically correct punctuation would be: "Harry kissed lots of girls. His lips are chapped."

Thank you, dear reader, for putting up with the wrath of Fio. She's steaming because a contest judge accused her of writing run-on sentences and gave her a "3" on spelling, grammar, and punctuation. What a nudnik.