Answer: Are Run-on Sentences Allowed in Dialog?

[chomiji]

badtzphoto was wondering whether run-on sentences are allowed in dialogue. To answer this, we'll first take a closer look at the nature of run-on sentences and then explore what happens when one is used in dialog.

I once knew a technical fellow who wrote quite well, but he had a rather annoying idiosyncrasy: he was convinced that there was a certain word length at which a sentence became a run-on sentence. When I asked him to check over things that I had written, he was always picking out lengthy sentences with more than one clause and saying that they were run-ons. He was usually wrong.

First off, a run-on sentence need not be a long, convoluted sentence. The only true defining characteristic of a run-on sentence is that it contains multiple clauses joined without appropriate connectors:

"Well, if you don't want to play Leo and Stumpy, what do you want to play?" said Jem, and I could see he was trying to be reasonable with Dill on his first day back.

"Something different, something really swell. I read this new book the hero was a college professor, he was an explorer, he used a whip he had a gun too," said Dill, his eyes alight with his enthusiasm for his new hero.

Now, Dill might well have just spilled out his words this way, and if we were making a court transcript of his statement, that would be how we'd report it — even though it's hard on the reader who's trying to figure out why Dill loves this particular character. But as an author, you have far more control of your characters' utterances. Even if you don't want to make your loquacious young Mississippi lad speak with an orator's skills, you can break up his statements so that his explanation is easier for the reader to understand:

"Well, if you don't want to play Leo and Stumpy, what do you want to play?" said Jem, and I could see he was trying to be reasonable with Dill on his first day back in Maycomb.

"Something different, something really swell. I read this new book: the hero was a college professor and he was an explorer. He used a whip; he had a gun too," said Dill, his eyes alight with his enthusiasm for his new hero.

I've only added a single word to Dill's enthusiastic data dump: the coordinating conjunction and. I've also added several pieces of punctuation, including a period (full stop) to break the run-on sentence into two separate sentences. None of that really alters Dill's headlong speech: he's still speaking like a boy brimming with fervor about his new favorite story.

So are run-on sentences allowed in dialog? As you can see, it's not actually a matter of what's allowed: rather, it's a matter of letting your reader become immersed in your piece. Adding connecting words or punctuation (or both) makes it easier for your reader to understand what's going on. As contradictory as it may seem, choosing the connectors carefully allows your dialog to seem natural and artless without confusing your audience.

Sources

• Fragments and Run-ons (The Writing Center at UNC Chapel Hill)

Comments

[badtzphoto.livejournal.com]

Oh, cool. Thanks for answering.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

This was a good one, thanks! I always figured grammar rules could be looser in dialogue (because that would make it more "real"), but I hadn't thought about how that would change the readability of it.

[kalabetakyanda.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah. You... you understand writing, you. :)
I prefer no run-ons. Rarely does anything get more real; just harder to read.

[t-verano.livejournal.com]

I understand the 'readability' point and know that it has a lot of merit (probably the only merit that really matters). I also have to confess that the complete avoidance of (well-written, paradoxical though that seems) run-on sentences generally tones down the 'babbling' effect of the dialog for me to the point where the speaker no longer seems to be babbling at all, as far as the rhythm and effect of his/her speech goes.

I do understand that this is because of the way I read, and that there are just about as many different ways to experience the act of reading as there are readers. For me, though, I 'hear' each word of each sentence out loud in my head as I read, and the length of the pauses caused by the punctuation is dependent upon the type of punctuation. A period gets the longest pause (except for an ellipse, of course), followed by the slightly shorter pause of the semicolon, followed by the definitely shorter pause of a comma. In dialog, where a speaker is rushing along and switching subjects helter-skelter with no organization in their speech and/or thoughts -- giving equal weight and emphasis to a string of phrases without even coming up for air between those phrases -- the type (and thus 'length,' to my ears and eyes) of those pauses has a strong effect on how I end up perceiving the character's pattern of speech.

That said, I agree totally that the example you quoted is difficult to read and does not work well as dialog (it doesn't actually give me the effect of a babbling speaker, for that matter). The cleaned-up and legal version, sadly for me, doesn't give me the effect of a babbling speaker, either, though. Judiciously applied, carefully constructed run-on sentences -- severely rationed and vetted for intelligibility! -- give me that effect.

Yes, I am wrong. I know this. I know run-ons are incorrect, and if they make the reading experience more difficult, that's a double "uh-oh" right there. (Sorry for the ridiculous length and the ridiculously long and overly complicated sentences in this comment. Thinking about this kind of stuff tends to push my Passionate Interest buttons. :-))