hi everyone welcome back to my channel learn academic english where i teach intermediate
and advanced level lessons for english learners who want to take their english to the next level
in today's video i'm going to be continuing my series of videos about english sentences and
i'm going to give you a short but sweet lesson about comma splices and run-ons
before i get started i'd like to remind you of a couple things one is that i have a whole
series of videos that will help you with english sentences so please make sure to check that out
and if you find this video helpful please don't forget to give it a like and leave a comment
those things really help me to grow my channel and reach more english learners like you
so let's take a quick look at what we have here i'm an english writing teacher i teach english
learners at the college level about how to write sentences and essays research papers
and one of the most common mistakes that i see is comma splices and run-ons those they're two
different mistakes but they're similar so we can put them together in the same group
in addition this is also a very common writing mistake made by native speakers so it's common
for both native speakers of english and people who are learning english as their second language
today i'm going to show you what comma splices and run-ons are and i'll show you how to fix them
but i do want to remind you that it is extremely helpful to have an understanding of what a
sentence is meaning what is a clause and what are the subject and the verb of the sentence so
if those things are new for you you might want to check out my video about dependent and independent
clauses so let's get started first of all when we're talking about comma splices and run-ons we
need to think about how the sentence is structured and a sentence should be an independent clause i
see here stands for independent clause what is an independent clause it's a group of words that can
be a sentence because it has a subject and a verb now one common thing that we do with sentences is
that we put two independent clauses together and i'll show you an example in just a second but how
do we do that so we have a clause that's a group of words that has a subject and a verb basically
it's a sentence and then we have another one that we want to put together for example i love ice
cream but i hate cookies okay that would be this type of sentence i love ice cream that's the first
clause it has a subject i verb love in the second one i hate cookies subject i verb hate
we join them together by putting a comma and then a conjunction i love ice cream but i hate cookies
okay so there we have two independent clauses joined with a comma and then this purple mark here
is standing for the coordinating conjunction what's a coordinating conjunction we also call
them fanboys because it stands for the conjunctions for and nor but or yet and
so so again we can use those conjunctions in the middle there and join two clauses with a comma so
when we're thinking about writing that you do for school we're thinking about pretty formal style
of writing and the rule tells us that when we put two clauses together we need to have a comma and
one of these words to make a compound sentence and i have a video all about how to use coordinating
conjunctions so today's topic is about pickleball okay so let's take a look at the first one
pickleball is similar to tennis but it is played with wooden rackets so if we look at this sentence
this is correct and it follows this pattern pickleball is the subject the verb here is is
pickleball is similar to tennis that's our first clause we're going to join it
together with a comma and but and then in the second clause we have the verb it is played
subject it verb is played with wooden rackets we're joining two clauses together this is our
first clause this is our second clause with a comma and a conjunction but so this is correct
now what happens a lot of people who write in english make mistakes with this because
either they forget the conjunction and they join the two sentences together only with a comma
or they forget both the comma and the conjunction so this would be a comma splice
and this is a run on so let's take a look at the mistake pickleball is played outdoors the court is
concrete okay so what do we have here we have subject pickleball we have the verb is played
this is the first part of the sentence and what we can do here is that we have a few options we
can put a period and say that this is a simple sentence or we can join it to another clause
the court is concrete now if we want to join these two clauses together we have to follow our formula
independent clause comma and then we need our coordinating conjunction so what coordinating
conjunction would go well here probably and because this is talking about another related idea
so again if we don't have the conjunction it is a mistake and that mistake is called a
comma splice so how do we correct it we add the conjunction okay let's look at the next one
it is one of the fastest growing sports it's not popular with young people yet so what do
we have here well we have subject it verb is and again we have subject it and verb is but
this sentence has two parts it has two clauses but we forgot the comma and the conjunction and
this is called a run on and you can think that the sentence kind of runs on it just keeps continuing
without the proper punctuation how can we correct that we can add a comma and maybe we would say
here but because these seem to be opposite ideas it's one of the fastest growing sports
but it's not popular with young people yet another thing that we could do is we could put a period
and we could make a new sentence and that would be okay also i prefer using but because it adds more
meaning to the sentence it adds that contrast meaning however it is correct to use a period
and then make a new sentence okay let's look at the next one pickleball is easier than tennis
seniors especially love it so let's think here is this a comma splice or a run-on
this is a run-on because the punctuation and the conjunction are missing how can we correct
this sentence well first let's just double check we have pickleball as the subject and the verb
is and then over here seniors is the subject and the verb is love so we have independent clause
independent clause now we need to add our comma and our conjunction so let's add the comma and
then let's think which conjunction would go best here pickleball is easier than tennis
seniors especially love it i think this would be so this shows the reason okay
finally let's look at the last one despite its growing popularity it's not an olympic sport
yet what's happening in this sentence well i added this one to show you that
sometimes it can be confusing when the sentence is
long and that's when it's more common to make these mistakes so first of all in
this sentence let's find the subject and the verb can you find the subject in this sentence
and how about the verb
so the subject is it and the verb is is what's all this over here
this is what we can call an introductory phrase despite is a preposition and then this is a noun
that comes after there's no subject and verb here this is just a phrase we often use a phrase with
a comma at the beginning of the sentence like in my opinion or to be honest or on the weekend
those are also introductory phrases so what do we have here then we have a simple sentence we have
one independent clause now we can add a second clause to make a longer sentence so despite its
growing popularity it's not an olympic sport yet maybe we want to say but i think it will be
it will be an olympic sport so here what do i have i have my subject i and i have the verb
think and we are going to join those two clauses together with a comma so now we have our formula
we have our first independent clause with subject and verb and we have our second independent clause
with subject and verb and we have our comma but so again i just wanted to show you this one so
you can see that sometimes a sentence starts to get longer when we add more things and that's
when it's easier to make these mistakes because we might start to get confused as the sentence gets
longer so the lesson here is that don't forget the formula that you can join two independent
clauses to make a compound sentence with a comma and a coordinating conjunction in the middle
there are other types of sentences and other types of ways for example we can also use a semicolon
and we can use a word like however and comma there are other types of things you can do but
this is the most common uh one that we see where people make the mistake of a comma splice where
they join only with a comma or a run-on where they forget the comma and the conjunction how
can you fix that in your writing after you write you need to go back and read your writing sentence
by sentence analyze your sentences the same way i did here where is the subject and verb where
is the subject and verb do i have two clauses how do i connect them comma coordinating conjunction
or one of the other ways that you can see in my other videos so if you have a question please
let me know and you can practice with me in the comments below don't forget to check out the other
videos in this series and come back soon for more lessons about writing take care and see you soon