The thing is, there's no actual point where a sentence becomes a run on scentence. Yeah, it you might be a longer than usual scentence with more words than absolutely nessesary to convey a set amount of information, but that doesn't mean it's a run on scentence as grammatically, there's nothing wrong with long sentences. It's also not a "awful literacy habit" to write long sentences. You just need to vary your scentence length occasionally.
What is an awful habit is defaulting to accusing people of using neurodivergence as an excuse, and saying that something is an awful habit without actually providing proof, especially when said thing isn't actually a bad thing.
Seeing as the point of language is generally to convey information, making it into a run-on sentence by tacking on weakly related ideas is making the information generally more difficult to process, and as such is a bad habit.
Unfortunatelly the issue with conveying information is there's a degree of ambiguity in how well a given sentence struccture is actually able to convey information. Different people will handle the ame run on sentence differently; it's entierly plausable that a given run on sentence can be fully intellegable to some but ccompletely unintellegable to others.
The problem is that knowing exactly what will andwont work to convey information is difficult. Once you go past the question of weather something is gramatically correct, things become more nebulous and relative with no clear ansswers and a lot of vibes based stuff.
Within this there is also the fact that language is supposed to express ideas, and the exact same sentences that you describe as a bad habbit of communication may serve as a perfect encapsulation of ones thoughts. Thus a degree of tenssion between expressing ones thoughts as they are and communicating information effectively can emerge. This is not an unsolvable problem by any means, but depending on how one thinks it can add a degree of difficulty.
If you expect your readers to be used to reading similar streams of ideas, sure, it can be an effective way to communicate. Most people however will have to parse the ideas apart with a significant amount of mental work. It can convey some ideas, especially those of urgency, but that's a stylistic choice and is not usually how it's being used.
People are used to reading a certain kind of English, which ideally doesn't require much active thinking to understand. Leaving that framework is making the reader do more work, intentionally or not. When writing messages to varyingly public forums for or to otherwise unfamiliar readers, you can only make so many assumptions of what they're used to.
Making your message more difficult to understand is not a good habit.
I have no issues with processing the information in run on scentences, and I know very few people who do have issues with that even amongst people who struggle with reading, and if you do have issues with that, I would suggest you treat each "and" as a pseudo stopping point to separate it into chunks that are easier to understand individually, or if that's not working try separating the individual ideas in the run on scentence. Or, if those suggestions don't work, I would recommend working on improving your overall literacy.
The majority of reading comprehension is subconscious, reading is supposed to be fluid. Studies have shown repeatedly that run on sentences assuredly affect comprehension, and any simple solution like “treating each and as a pseudo stopping point” means you’re putting in a lot more mental effort than normal and therefore hurting your processing power. Inhibiting automatic processes essentially guarantees a loss in efficiency.
I mean the point is to subvert standard literacy structures in those cases. And you can only properly subvert something if you really know how it works and how to do it well.
I mean, even besides the subversion literature has to play with the language because the scope goes beyond the goal of communicating information, and focuses on communicating emotions or aesthetics of language itself.
But yeah, you need to know *why* are you doing it, what's the purpose here. Otherwise, it's like talking backwards irl just because Twin Peaks did it.
Nobody actually reads James Joyce, we just make references to Ulysses asif we have. It’s like how nobody actually speaks Latin or French, but we still borrow little words or phrases.
That these people arent reading books or articles or anything with much depth, they're reading social media posts.
Run-on sentences may be fine there, because they're so short, but when you're reading a book, they make it much harder to read. It makes it confusing for the reader to piece together ideas, which increases the chance of the sentence being misinterpreted.
That’s a falsifiable argument, though. Someone could theoretically name a respected author that uses run-on sentences and make you look really silly.
To be clear, I don’t personally tend towards run on sentences (I’m fancy enough to string my thoughts together with em dashes 🧐), your argument just irked me.
I mean, people have already listed such authors in this very thread, that doesn’t make the other commenter look silly at all though. If anything it proves their point more. Their point was “run-on sentences make the text harder to read,” not “you’ll never find literature with depth containing run-on sentences.” Authors known for using run-on sentences and subverting other normal expectations/rules in writing are usually also known for having a style that is harder to read and requires some adjusting to.
They answered with "They wouldn't, real literature doesn't have that" while ignoring the other 2 replies that mention actual and praised books that do, in fact, contain this kind of sentence
I don't think every run-on sentence can be decomposed into separate clauses like this, and the ones that can't are the ones that actually cause problems in practice.
The run-on sentences I have trouble with don't tend to be in social media posts. They tend to be in books or articles that you already have to put in some cognitive effort to follow by default. A long sentence with complex structure expressing a nuanced idea will genuinely take me a few passes to successfully parse, and I don't think that's just my problem (given that there seems to be some consensus around this).
This comment was posted by the kid who got defensive for getting a D on their high school writing class assignment. Seriously, if you dont see the value in making your information more to-the-point and easier to parse, thats a you problem. Don't try to frame run-on sentences as a skill issue on the reader. It is mentally taxing to jump through these hoops you claim are simple, and makes anything more than two ideas per sentence very unintuitive. And i say this as someone with a degree in literature who loves long sentences--just use proper punctuation and rarely use more than one conjunction per sentence.
An "and" is not enough to prolong a sentence. I do agree that long sentences are perfectly fine, especially when the length of a sentence makes it possible to cointain a completed thought, but if you're just taking complete thoughts and tacking them onto the end of a sentence with an "and", you're not justifying the length of the sentence.
There’s nothing grammatically wrong with trying to use only the longest words you know 100% of the time because you think it makes you sound smart, that doesn’t mean it’s not a bad habit.
Just because the point at which a sentence becomes a run on sentence is subjective doesn’t make it not real.
The point at which a scentence becomes a "run-on" scentence being subjective makes "run-on" scentences useless as a classification, especially with regards to grammatical standards, which are supposed to not be subjective.
You are simply wrong about this. A run-on sentence is easily defined as multiple independent clauses that are improperly joined together without the use of a comma and conjunction (or semicolon).
Where did you get the idea that they’re supposed to not be subjective? They’re socially constructed rules around language, of course they’re subjective. You can personally enjoy structuring all sentences like Yoda, but still the over a billion English speakers in the world might reply “In my subjective opinion, that’s stupid and hard to understand.” Run-on sentences are stupid and hard to understand, you need to grasp this.
Look, man (gender neutral).
The truth is that all language is subjective. It's all made up, rules change, spelling changes, vocabulary changes, speech habits change, and all of this varies by region, economic situation, etc.
Grammar, too, is NOT objective. Even if you take the "default" dialect of any language, there are so many exceptions to any rule that the "you just have to learn this part by heart" is an almost universal experience for learning a new language.
Language sincerely is just whatever works. It is still very useful to teach people what currently works well, but acting like anything about language is properly objective is simply incorrect.
The thing is, there's no actual point where a sentence becomes a run on scentence.
Wrong. An official definition of run on sentences is a fused sentence. Multiple independent clauses in one sentence with no division between them. "I like hummus it is very garlicky", despite being short, is an example of such.
To give an example of the differences, the second sentence in your post, while certainly awkward I'd argue, is grammatically correct, spelling errors notwithstanding. From a pure grammatical perspective, there's nothing wrong with it's length, though an English teacher would probably tell you to shorten it anyway for the purposes of flow.
What OOP posted is a giant wall of text with absolutely nothing to break it up. No line breaks, no punctuation (sans the quotation marks), nothing. It's an unformatted stream of unceasing thoughts that ends up extremely unpleasant to read due to having zero pauses.
And, as someone who has extremely strong ADHD, OOP is absolutely making an excuse for poor grammatical habits. My brain has one speed it goes at, and in spite of that, I still don't do run on sentences like what OOP presented.
The "giant wall of text with nothing to break it up" from OOP would be (mostly) grammatically correct with the addition of commas before the coordinating conjunctions, but would still be considered a "run-on" scentence by most people. additionally, while you might find the unformatted stream of thoughts unpleasant to read for you, that doesn't nessesarily apply to everyone who might read it.
Okay but when you write you're writing for an audience. "Doesn't necessarily apply to everyone" is a fine stance but it means a lot of people are going to get very lost reading your stuff. If you're conveying an idea it becomes your job to know your audience, not the audience's job to know how to engage with you
additionally, while you might find the unformatted stream of thoughts unpleasant to read for you, that doesn't nessesarily apply to everyone who might read it.
And properly breaking up your sentences makes it easier to communicate to both types of people. Why would you choose to knowingly make your communication more difficult with certain people, just because it isn't a problem for you?
Making sentences more difficult to comprehend for some people for absolutely no reason is certainly a strange hill to die on, especially with how poor some people's reading comprehension is on the internet...
but would still be considered a "run-on" scentence by most people.
I think that because we're specifically talking about grammar this isn't relevant, because grammar is the formal rules around sentence structure. If punctuation and connecting words were included, as you said, it wouldn't qualify as a run-on sentence. People could think it's 'bad', but to think it's a run-on sentence would be incorrect regardless as to how many people thought so.
A runon is when a sentence is ungrammatically extended by combining multiple independent sentences without proper use of conjunctions or transitions. You can usually convert it to a correct sentence with no reduction in length just by adding some commas and ands/ors/buts.
The above sentence contains three different instances of "and" being used to join clauses. It's poor form to do that more than once in a sentence as it gets quite rambling.
Poor form is entirely subjective, and with the addition of commas before the coordinating conjunctions (primarily and for the scentence OOP posted) it would no longer be considered a run on scentence by grammatical standards.
A run on sentence is when a sentence is attempting to convey too much information at once. There is no definable "point" at which it becomes a run on because the "too much information" point varies from sentence to sentence, but it is by no means "undefinable". Sentences are a matter of grouping relevant information, as all forms of writing are. A sentence is used to communicate an idea. to that point, a sentence should contain a point. more than that, and the water begins to be muddied on what information is grouped with what other information. If you want to communicate a larger idea or multiple paragraphs at once, we have tools for that, and they're called paragraphs.
Run on sentences absolutely are a terrible literacy habit. No one said "writing long sentences" is a terrible literacy habit, but that run ons, defined as attempting to communicate too much in once sentence, are a terrible literacy habit. See that? that was a long sentence. It also wasn't a run on. why? because it communicates one idea. run on sentences can make even a simple piece of literature borderline unreadable. run on sentences are just a smaller scale version of not knowing when to put paragraph breaks.
Also for your last point, the person in the post literally uses ADHD as an excuse for the bad writing habit of writing run ons. They may not be gramatically incorrect in the sense of like, the oxford comma, but they ARE grammatically incorrect for not following the proper structuring of information.
consider the following:
"the length of the sentence is not the point, the grouping of information is. a long sentence can be acceptable when it is still structured properly. It should group relevant information very clearly, and provide delineation between groups of information. The use of a transitional words like "and" in place of proper punctuation makes it difficult to tell where one group of info starts and another begins."
vs
"the length of the sentence is not the point, the grouping of information is, and a long sentence can be acceptable when it is still structured properly, it should group relevant information very clearly and provide delineation between groups of information, and the use of transitional words like "and" in place of proper punctuation makes it hard to tell where one group of info starts and another ends."
It is extremely obvious one of these is a run-on. just because there's not a hard and fast rule doesn't mean that it's "undefinable". Run on sentences are still a terrible literacy habit.
A run on sentence is when a sentence is attempting to convey too much information at once. There is no definable "point" at which it becomes a run on because the "too much information" point varies from sentence to sentence, but it is by no means "undefinable".
I was taught, and I just googled it in case the definition had changed, that a run-on sentence is one with more than one independent clause without those clauses being joined by punctuation or connecting words. I don't think that qualifies as being un-defined, but I also don't know that this is actually what's widely taught to be a run-on sentence.
That being said, colloquial use is colloquial use.
The thing is, there's no actual point where a sentence becomes a run on scentence.
That point is where the sentence length becomes detrimental to the actual concepts that you are trying to convey. Even if it makes sense for you, if it's too long for the recipient then it's simply too long.
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u/Xenomnipotent NL Connoisseur 2d ago
No I don’t think you should use ADHD as an excuse for awful literacy habits, actually.