Fused Sentence

Fused Sentences: Defined

Linda owns a catering business in New Orleans she enjoys cooking for special events such as weddings, parties, and holidays.

Can you spot the error in this sentence? This is a fused sentence.

A fused sentence is a sentence in which two independent clauses are joined without any punctuation separating them. Fused sentences are also called run-on sentences. An independent clause (sometimes called a main clause) is simply a complete sentence. A complete sentence contains a subject and a verb, and it expresses a complete thought.

In the above example, there are two independent clauses: (1) Linda owns a catering business in New Orleans, and (2) She enjoys cooking for special events such as weddings, parties, and holidays.

How to Correct a Fused Sentence

The good news is that there are several different ways to eliminate fused sentences from writing. Let's look at some of them.

Separate the independent clauses into two separate sentences:

Linda owns a catering business in New Orleans. She enjoys cooking for special events such as weddings, parties, and holidays.

Making two separate sentences of the independent clauses is probably the easiest way to correct the writing error. All we need to do is add a period after the first independent clause and capitalize the first word of the second independent clause.

Use a semicolon to separate the two independent clauses:

Rewrite the sentence so that it contains only one independent clause:

Linda enjoys cooking for special events such as weddings, parties, and holidays with her catering business in New Orleans.

In this example, we've eliminated the need for punctuation altogether by restructuring the sentence.

Insert a comma after the first independent clause and add a coordinating conjunction.

The coordinating conjunctions are for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so. An easy way to remember the coordinating conjunctions is to remember the word fanboys:

• For
• And
• Nor
• But
• Or
• Yet
• So

In the following example, we place a comma after the word Orleans since it is the last word of the first independent clause. Then, we add the coordinating conjunction and:

Make one of the clauses a dependent clause:

Adding the word 'since' at the beginning of this sentence makes the first clause into a dependent clause - it can no longer stand alone.

Use a conjunctive adverb, such as therefore, however, or moreover, to join the two independent clauses:

If we add a conjunctive adverb in this way, we will also need to insert a semicolon before the conjunctive adverb and place a comma after it. Here's an example:

Linda enjoys cooking for special events such as weddings, parties, and holidays; therefore, she owns a catering business in New Orleans.