Run-on Sentences
• Run-ons occur when you try to make one sentence do too much. For example:
William gazed across the broad Pacific his heart was filled with dread.
• Avoid run-ons by: a. breaking the long sentence into separate sentences:
William gazed across the broad Pacific. His heart was filled with dread.
b. reducing one of the clauses to a subordinate clause and adding a comma:
When William gazed across the broad Pacific, his heart was filled with dread.
c. adding a comma and coordinating conjunction between the two clauses:
William gazed across the broad Pacific, but his heart was filled with dread
: Regarding Plurals Ending in
Most plurals in the English language end in the letter “s.” A fun trick that many people try is simply adding the letter "s" willy-nilly to any noun, even when the plural form should not end in s, resulting in such silly phrases as “all the womans and mans of the town were gathered.” (Look for more on this in the next section.)
For the vast majority of plural nouns that actually end in the letter "s," the rule is rather simple: add the apostrophe after the
Sentence Fragments
Fix fragments by making sure your sentence contains both a subject and a verb
He leaped out of the window because there was no other way of escaping the fire
Regarding Irregular Plurals
There are plenty of plurals in the English language that are irregular; that is, they do not end in the letter "s." Some of the most common, as alluded to above, are the word “woman” which becomes “women,” and “man” which becomes “men.” You may have forgotten a few other of these uncommon plurals, such as geese, mice, phenomena, and words that lack plurals such as sheep and deer.
For irregular plurals, you must add an apostrophe before the s.
If all of the women have fancy cars, you should write “the women’s fancy cars.”
Should you find that every deer in the woods behind your house has a blue tail, you will write “the deer’s tails