FIXING COMMA SPLICES & RUN-ONS WORKSHEET
Part 1: Add periods, commas, and semicolons (or nothing at all) to make the following sentences
grammatically correct. The only punctuation marks required are those necessary to separate clauses.
You may need to capitalize some words if you decide that they should begin a new sentence.
1.
It is now 11:58 p.m. ____ I should have gone to sleep a long time ago ____ nevertheless ____ I must
press on and complete this worksheet.
2. While it would technically be possible to give you no homework tonight ____ I know that without it,
you’d feel like you weren’t really getting good value for your tax or tuition dollars.
3. It’s a tempting idea ____ however ____ it’s more fun to make students miserable ____ than to
make them happy.
4. I take that last sentence back ____ I get grouchy when I stay up late.
5.
As you dream of your sweetheart ____ or the scary clown who keeps chasing you ____ I’ll slave away
long into the night to help make you a better writer.
6. Because I’ll be operating on four hours of sleep ____ I may be a bit short-tempered tomorrow ____
I’m no fun to be around ____ until I’ve had my requisite seven cups of coffee.
7.
Coffee is simply the nectar of life ____ only the Clapper rivals it as civilization’s greatest
achievement.
8. Lack of sleep makes me exaggerate ____ but I stand by that last sentence.
9. I’m going to surf the Net for a while ____ I just found out that I was outbid on Ebay for that
waterproof leopard-print blazer!
10. It’s 12:44 now ____ and I’m out of clever ideas ____ consequently ____ this sentence is a little dull.
11. I cannot condone bribery as a way of improving your grade ____ I am ____ however ____ putting
on the board the names of companies whose products I really like.
12. My favorite Shakespeare play is The Winter’s Tale ____ the forecast calls for rain tomorrow.
Part 2: Change the punctuation in the following sentences (if it needs to be changed) to turn fragments
and run-ons into grammatically correct sentences.
1.
In kindergarten. Students usually have to give everyone else in class a valentine, they always save the
icky ones for boys with cooties.
2. You shouldn’t have told him that he was an ugly warthog now he’ll never go to the Valentine’s Dance
with you!
3. It’s hard to go wrong with traditional Valentine’s Day gifts, therefore I’d recommend chocolate. Or
flowers.
4. It’s odd that all the sentences so far are about Valentine’s Day, you’re probably not completing this
worksheet in February, maybe it has something to do with the fact that Mr. Freeman just copied all
these sentences off of a worksheet he wrote in February 1998.
5.
Although Jack and Cal both insist that Rose should get into a lifeboat; Rose leaps out. Consequently
she can spout some more incredibly cheesy dialogue.
6. I like making sentence #6 really easy to figure out. Because I like the number 6; I have six brothers,
no I don’t; I only have one, nevertheless I hope you find this sentence really easy to punctuate I hope
that I haven’t made it too difficult. By rambling on this way.
7.
All right, this sentence is fairly easy, #10 however is going to be an absolute bear.
8. I do not want to run the mile in gym class, furthermore, I’m morally opposed to the push-up.
9. I ran the mile. Now I’m totally out of breath. Therefore. You’ll have to punctuate. This sentence.
Correctly.
10. In every soap opera there’s a wealthy and attractive woman she is married to a man who suffers from
amnesia therefore he doesn’t mind that she’s left him for his twin brother he was married to her
younger sister but everyone thinks she died in a hang-gliding accident however we find out later that
she is alive in the rainforest she eventually comes back and reunites with the man she thinks is her
husband he’s actually her husband’s twin brother consequently all sorts of interesting stuff happens
you’ll have to tune in tomorrow to find out how it all ends.