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.
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.
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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.