FWS, Pd ____
Name _________________________________ Date ______
Dirty Dozen: SF/R-O (Sentence Fragments + Run-ons)
AIM: _________________________________________________________________________________
Do Now: “I do.” It’s the shortest and longest sentence. Explain. __________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Important Terms
PHRASE: Two or more words that don’t contain a subject (“actor”) + coordinating verb (“action”) pair
e.g. “studying grammar” or “the perfect worksheet” or “with the worksheet”
CLAUSE: A part of a sentence that has its own subject and coordinating verb
Independent Clause (“independent adult” who doesn’t need help)
[IC]
Dependent Clause (“dependent child” who needs the support of an adult) [DC]
DC are also known as sentence fragments (SF) if you try to pass “children” off as “adults.”
e.g. “we’re studying grammar today” [
]
“the fact that we’re studying grammar today” [ ]
A) Read the following paragraph about a young person’s experience of a Sunday from Francine
Prose’s novel, Goldengrove. Label the clause IC or DC.
If all the clocks and calendars vanished from the planet [
Sunday came [
], people, especially children, would still know when
]. They would still feel that suck of dread air [
slips behind a curtain [
], that hollow vacuum created when time
], when the minutes quit their orderly tick, and ooze away, one by one [
muted [ ]; a jellylike haze hovers and blurs the landscape [
world hides and conspires to pretend [
]. The phone doesn’t ring [
]. Colors are
], and the rest of the
] that everyone else is baking cookies or watching TV [
].
How paired independent clauses behave in the wild (we’ll review these more in detail later)
1) They hang out with their friend, Period. e.g. Grammar stumps me. I protest this absurd task.
2) They hang out with their friend, Comma and one of the FANBOYS (For And Nor But Or Yet So).
e.g. Grammar stumps me, so I protest this absurd task.
3) They hang out with Semi-colon. e.g. Grammar stumps me; I protest this absurd task.
For the most part, run-on sentences (R-O) occur when:
Independent clauses hang out with Comma but exclude the FANBOYS. (i.e. a comma splice)
e.g. Grammar stumps me, I protest this absurd task.
NOTE: It’s not a matter of sentence length. You can write a short run-on sentence or a
grammatically correct sentence that is quite lengthy, yet still connects clauses and phrases articulately.
Identify any SF or R-O errors and fix them.
1. When students exit the building on April 11th.
2. Next week’s exam is difficult, study your notes.
3. Montag challenges his society’s views, Kino also tries to break out of the rigid mold he’s set in.
4. Although she had reviewed issues like pronoun errors and had reminded them about the quiz.