Missed Periods

I am so grateful I’m not famous. How mortifying to have your romantic life on display for the world to see. Although, admittedly, having been married for six years, it would not be nearly as juicy:

WHY THEY
CAN’T FIND ANYTHING TO WATCH
FEELING BLOATED, MIDDLE CLASS, AND MARRIED
The nightmare of agreeing on a
show in the big world of Cable

And, by the way, what does US Weekly mean that these women can’t find love? Jennifer Aniston had Brad Pitt’s hottest years. Cameron was in a four-year relationship with my favorite ‘N Sync member and then dabbled in male models. Jessica was married, and didn’t she and Tony Romo just break up?

Geez! Do women have to be in love at all times? Relationships are tough. I think it’s important to take a break in between. If you rush into something, you might make poor choices:

Similarly, we can’t just rush from one sentence into another without a break in between. It can be tempting, but it’s not fair to your reader, and ultimately, it’s not fair to yourself because your reader will have a hard time understanding what you are trying to say. Here's an example of what happens when we do:

After a year of considering it, Cara finally broke up with her boyfriend Ben had no idea Cara wasn’t happy in the relationship.

So, what you just experienced, my friends, is an example of a run-on sentence. A run-on sentence is simply when two or more sentences are fused together without any punctuation:

Sentence 1- After a year of considering it, Cara finally broke up with her boyfriend.
Sentence 2- Ben had no idea Cara wasn’t happy in the relationship.

Run-ons can be long like the one we just experienced, or they can be short like this one:

Her timing was terrible he had just bought her an engagement ring.

Sentence 1- Her timing was terrible.

Sentence 2- He had just bought her an engagement ring.

So, why do we do this? Why do we feel the need to rush from one sentence right into the next without a break? Well, experts claim that we do this for several reasons: we may be in a hurry, we may be afraid to slow down lest we lose our momentum, or we may just be kind of lazy, but they warn that when we write under any or all of these circumstances, we may miss our periods. Yikes!

So, what do we do?

“Slow down,” experts recommend. They claim that when people actually proofread their sentences slowly and carefully, 90% of them realize that there needs to be a break in their run-on sentences.

However, experts warn, we must be careful. We tend to incorrectly insert a comma in such situations. So, before you just stick in a comma, you must ask yourself an important question: am I separating two complete sentences? If you are, then you can’t put a comma because a comma simply isn’t strong enough to deal with a sentence on each side. Two sentences need something stronger: they either need a period or a semi-colon.

So, when do we use a period and when do we use a semi-colon? Well, that, my friends, is really a question of whether our sentences are independent or codependent. Can our sentences stand on their own comfortably?

Or do they need each other to feel complete?

Here is an example of two codependent sentences that are best held together by a semi-colon rather than separated by a period:

I almost cried when Samantha broke up with Jared; he was so hot.

I didn't want to separate those two sentences with a period because the second sentence (he was so hot) really completes the meaning of the first; it tells why I almost cried.

Here's another one:

I also cried when Big and Carrie finally got married; they belong together.

What was that? Did someone just tell me to get a life?

That's totally something that Miranda would say.