The Run-On in the Scholarship Essay
A student drafts a 250-word scholarship essay. One sentence reads: 'I volunteered at the shelter every Saturday for two years it taught me patience and how to listen and I also learned to organize donations which I now do at my church.' The essay otherwise reads clearly. The student's teacher marks the sentence 'run-on' and suggests splitting it. The student objects: 'It's one idea about volunteering, so it should be one sentence. Splitting it makes it choppy.' The deadline is in three days, and the student wants to keep the energy of the long sentence.
1. Explain what makes this sentence a run-on, distinguishing it from a merely long sentence, and evaluate the student's 'one idea' defense.
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A run-on is not defined by length; it is defined by faulty joining of independent clauses. This sentence contains at least three independent clauses:
- 'I volunteered at the shelter every Saturday for two years'
- 'it taught me patience and how to listen'
- 'I also learned to organize donations'
Clause 1 and clause 2 are joined by nothing at all-a fused sentence. Clause 3 is joined by 'and,' which is acceptable, but the chain as a whole strings independent clauses together without punctuation or clear subordination. A long sentence with proper joining ('Although I volunteered every Saturday for two years, the experience taught me patience...') is fine; this one is not.
The 'one idea' defense confuses topic with grammar. All the clauses concern volunteering, but each makes a separate assertion. Relatedness of content does not license omitting punctuation. The student's concern about choppiness is legitimate, though-the fix need not be three short sentences.
2. Offer two revisions that preserve the student's preferred momentum: one using subordination, one using punctuation. Explain the different effect of each.
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Revision 1 (subordination):
Volunteering at the shelter every Saturday for two years taught me patience and how to listen, and it led me to organize donations, which I now do at my church.
Here the first clause becomes a participial subject ('Volunteering... taught me'), which fuses the action and its lesson into one grammatical unit. The sentence still moves, but the relationship between the two years and the lesson is now explicit rather than accidental.
Revision 2 (punctuation):
I volunteered at the shelter every Saturday for two years; it taught me patience and how to listen. That work also led me to organize donations, which I now do at my church.
A semicolon signals that two independent clauses are tightly linked-closer than a period, looser than a comma. The short second sentence then lands the payoff.
Effect: Revision 1 reads as a single flowing thought and suits a reflective essay; Revision 2 creates a pause that emphasizes the lesson. Both fix the run-on without producing the choppiness the student feared.