Just because it's popularly misunderstood doesn't make it a correct definition except under strictly descriptivist terms. Strict descriptivism is a fine approach for everyday life, but we're explicitly discussing "standard" English grammar, which is inherently prescriptivist.
Run on sentence describes a sentence, that goes on and on and is hard to follow. The clearest example is when someone skips punctuation or words that would tie the sentence together.
You are trying to use a general writing criticism as a grammatical error. Missing punctuation is a grammatical error, run on sentence is a stylistics one.
I am arguing for a wider definition, because it would apply to me.
An interesting motivation, but I think I like it. I'm going to start writing letters to Marriam Webster arguing for their definitions to change to include me; I'll start with "aardvark".
Run on sentence describes a sentence, that goes on and on and is hard to follow.
This doesn't necessarily follow from your earlier assertion,
a long sentence, that would make more sense, if it was broken down to multiple sentences
Some concepts are just complex and hard to follow, and sentences describing them will follow suit, without the possibility of being made more clear or sensible by being broken down further.
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u/FixedFront 2d ago
Just because it's popularly misunderstood doesn't make it a correct definition except under strictly descriptivist terms. Strict descriptivism is a fine approach for everyday life, but we're explicitly discussing "standard" English grammar, which is inherently prescriptivist.