By Virginia “Ginny” Gilroy, MA, Full-time Faculty and Lecturer, General Education
Avoiding run-on sentences
If you’re a beginning college writer and you’re writing very long sentences, chances are you have a run-on sentence. A sentence is a group of words with one subject and one verb that expresses a complete thought. If you are expressing more than one thought or idea in the same sentence, you have a run-on sentence.
The way to avoid run-on sentences is to be sure that each sentence is constructed around one independent clause that has a subject and a verb. Everything else in the sentence should describe, define, and support that main idea.
As a college writer, you probably don’t want a paper that is full of simple sentences, though it would be grammatically correct. To go beyond the basics, include dependent clauses and phrases that support the organizing idea of your sentence. As you build your sentence, be sure that all clauses add something to the main clause, but don’t overdo it. For a more in-depth exploration of complex sentence structures, take a look at the post from the Writing Center at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Helpful link:
https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/sentence-patterns/
Subject/verb agreement
When creating a grammatically correct sentence, the subject and verb in the sentence must agree in number. If you have ever learned a second language, you were taught to conjugate verbs, which is basically the same principle behind subject/verb agreement. To achieve subject/verb agreement, ask yourself how many things or people act in the sentence. If the action of the verb applies to one person or thing, the verb is singular. If the action of the verb is being performed or embodied by more than one person or thing, the verb will be plural.
Examples:
- The duck quacks at sunrise.
- All ducks quack.
Note that singular verbs, ironically have an s at the end.
Subject/verb agreement with pronouns. In direct contradict the rule stated above third person singular pronoun subjects require verbs that end in s.
| Singular Subjects | Plural Subjects | |
| First person | I learn | We learn |
| Second person | You learn | You all learn |
| Third person | He learns. She learns. The girl learns.* | They learn |
The problematic pronouns: As we saw in the chart above pronouns don’t like to follow the rules. The following is a quick list of some of the more challenging pronouns and the verb forms that will create agreement.
- Anyone, anybody, anything, everyone, everybody, everything, someone, somebody, something, either, neither, another, several. – are all collective pronouns acting as one and require a singular verb.
Many, both, few – require a plural verb.
- All, most, any, some, none — can be either plural or singular. In this case check the prepositional phrase for the required verb form.
Examples:
- Most of that hole was dug by me.
- Most of the holes were dug by team two.
There are some tricky exceptions to the rules above cited. Focus on memorizing the specific special cases and exceptions that you most often encounter in your writing. Master those and keep a reference guide handy to look up those cases you’re unsure of. Be wary of grammar checkers. With complex sentences, they are no better at picking out the real subject of the sentence than you are.
To go beyond the basics and be sure to check out the University of Wisconsin’s website for more exceptions to the basic rule of agreement. https://writing.wisc.edu/handbook/grammarpunct/subjectverb/
If you would like some online practice with subject/verb agreement, visit this link to the Excelsior College Writing Lab: https://owl.excelsior.edu/writing-refresher/grammar-refresher/subject-verb-agreement/
