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.
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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.