Look. You've got too many strings of sentences and you're banging them together! ...I couldn't resist the Monty Python reference.
A run-on sentence most often shows up as two or more full-length sentences that you ran together with commas or no punctuation at all. Here is an example: "There was nothing terribly wrong with the furnace it only needed to be cleaned, the service guy took a half hour to fix it." Since these ideas are closely related, you might think that a period doesn't happen until you change topics. But try reading this aloud and you notice pauses between furnace/it and cleaned/the. That is your first clue something must be done. First put a period when you pause, but you are not done checking yet! You have to check that you haven't made a sentence fragment. To do so, say these newly created sentences out loud, starting with the last one, and ask yourself if each makes sense: "The service guy took a half hour to fix it." Yes, that is sensible to say. Next, "It only needed to be cleaned." OK, fine there, and lastly "There was nothing terribly wrong with the furnace." Good! Keep in mind, if you use this trick and put periods each time you pause, you might end up with a sentence fragment and will have to rejoin it to its parent sentence with a comma -- your pause was correct, but deciding between a period or a comma depends on understanding both fragments and run-ons. Also, this is an auditory (listening) way to discover your run-on sentences and fix them. In other posts I will talk about fixing sentences by finding the subject and verb (the meat and potatoes) in what you've written.
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