run-on sentence

American  

noun

1. a written sequence of two or more main clauses that are not separated by a period or semicolon or joined by a conjunction.

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run-on sentence Cultural  

1. A grammatically faulty sentence in which two or more main or independent clauses are joined without a word to connect them or a punctuation mark to separate them: “The fog was thick he could not find his way home.” The error can be corrected by adding a conjunction with a comma (“The fog was thick, and he could not find his way home”) or by separating the two clauses with a semicolon (“The fog was thick; he could not find his way home”).

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Etymology

Origin of run-on sentence

First recorded in 1910–15

Example Sentences

Britney Spears spoke for more than 20 minutes, in what felt like a breathless run-on sentence.

From Slate • Jun. 29, 2021

It looked like a long run-on sentence, using just four letters — a, t, c and g — repeated 29,882 times.

From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 13, 2020

The narrator lives in a country whose mythic propositions hang in the same limbo as her run-on sentence.

From The New Yorker • Sep. 6, 2019

Talking in one long, run-on sentence, he sounds like the pitchman at a carnival.

From Seattle Times • Sep. 11, 2011

She talked like a run-on sentence, no pauses or periods.

From "Far from the Tree" by Robin Benway