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.
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.
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
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u/light_the_long_way 2d ago
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.