hehehe
i actually had a colleague shout at me some years ago because i insisted that students in advanced composition should know what a split infinitive means.  a sigh for subjective grammar.
and i hope you got your tequila.

I expect to see those kinds of grammatical errors from the engineers that work with me (I’m an engineer, so I get to complain about our typically poor writing skills). But I see that crap from our marketing person, who has a BA in English. What is worse is that she doesn’t believe my criticisms because she has an English degree and I’m an engineer. Shoot me now.

Subjective so-called “grammarians” are largely responsbile for destroying the moral fabric of our society.

If these people insist on contributing to the downfall of our great nation, the least they could do is use the active voice.

Recent true conversation, quoted word for word with no changes except names changed to protect me from Doocification.

Dr. X: (family doctor with 18 months experience) Have you seen that patient with the red and perforated ear drum? What did you think?
Me: (ear specialist with 35 years experience) The ear drum was normal, actually.
Dr. X: Normal, it was bright red!
Me: You were looking at the ear canal.
Dr. X: I know an ear drum when I see one. What about the hole?
Me: There was no hole. I did [tests to confirm visual impression of normal ear drum] and there was no hole.
Dr. X: I’m going to send him to [medical facility in another city] for confirmation. I don’t think you know what you’re looking at.

Have you read “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” by Lynne Truss yet?  Highly enjoyable for the punctuation-aware individual.  (And yes, I know that book titles are supposed to be italicized, not put in quotation marks, but I can’t figure that out in this @*#% comments field.  So there!)

I actually recommended that the recruiter read that book, which I liked a lot. I spelled out the title. I was an ass.  But I was provoked.

I kind of like that so many people can’t write a proper sentence.  I swoop in with my editing pen and a little common sense and look like a hero!  Never mind the fact that I have hardly contributed to this group project otherwise!  Look in the other direction!

I have great power in my dept. because I am the only one who reads.  Everyone brings me his letters to write.  Everyone asks me how to spell words.  Everyone approaches me with grovelling reverence for my superior literary abilities, at least when s/he needs help.  My co-workers know that I own the MLA handbook and that I know how to use it.  Sometimes I am a little god here at my desk. 

When I worked at a newspaper and we got faxes like that, they’d go straight to the trash. Unless there was actual news to glean from the release, in which case we’d rewrite the thing to death. It was pretty much understood that PR people had no clue about decent writing.

Even I knew it was a run-on. 
Hey!  Thanks for the rate & perfect comment, now I am validated.

What’s more, “expected to increase efficiencies by over 90%” means absolutely… nothing.

“Generate efficiencies of 90%” would mean something, if we knew what the efficiencies were in… the entire IT budget perhaps, or the cost of network access, or perhaps it just increases network speed…

As it is, if it increases current efficiencies of, say, 1% by over 90%, you’re going to be just shy of 2% ‘efficiencies’, whatever they are, when you’re done, which isn’t much help at the end of the day… The text is too ambiguous to convey any information.

Gah. I AM a PR person. The reason your recruiter IS a recruiter now and a “Used to be” PR person is because he writes lead paragraphs - nay - lead sentances like that one. Not only is it a grammatical nightmare, its also one of the dullest leads EVER. OY.

This is one of the best posts (with the best ensuing comments) I’ve ever read. I loved it. How do people not know a run-on sentence when they see one? Or, at the very least, have it pointed out to them (and quite patiently, from the sounds of it)?
Between feeling superior about my editing skills and lamenting the state of grammar today, I’m pretty much emotional all the time.
Also? “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” is fabulous.

hahhaah, oh man.  that made my day.

Alli

You have got to learn to carry your own tequila or you’ll never make it.

1. I thought the run-on sentence was obvious so I was looking for the less obvious: It’s a sentence, not a paragraph.  Never a sentence does a paragraph make.
2. I recently asked the clerk assisting me in the bra department of Nordstrom if the department had acquired a liquor license. Sadly, the answer was no. 

Argh! I get this so often at work. I once had a program manager review a manual I had written, and he rejected any sentence that started with the word “because”. Because you can start sentences with a subordinate clause, his suggestion was ludicrous.

Or more recently, someone gave me several documents that were so badly written, they were often either grammatically incorrect or completely incomprehensible. I was told to edit it, but not to change the wording at all. Huh?

That’s awesome.  I’m very mediocre at grammar and I can see that plain as day.  Besides, the paragraph is hard to understand and that’s your first clue it needs revision.

Makes sense that he wrote it.

I once worked as a web app developer and contacted the marketing director to tell him I needed the email blurb for the trail account scripts I’d just written. He told me, and I quote, “I’ll have XYZ wordsmith something for you.”

“Wordsmith?!” As a verb? It takes a hell of a writer to use “wordsmith” as a noun and not come of sounding like, well, a marketing director. But to use it as a verb?

I can imagine a marketing professor with a bad comb-over telling his students, “Don’t ever ‘write’—‘wordsmith.’” And don’t ever “shit”—“poopsmith.”

It must be something in the water in the buildings where marketing classes are held.

I was totally going to mention Eats Shoots and Leaves. It’s great except for her obsession with Starbursts.

I also agree that you should carry your own tequila. Or at least keep some in your desk.

Hate to spoil the fun but he was right. It’s not necessarily, or fundamentally, a run-on sentence. A terrible, awkward, boring sentence? Yes. But not an unambiguous run-on.

The confusion comes from his use of a weak expletive structure buried by an inversion to force the ‘packet router’ bit up front, a trick journos usually use to bury the quoter and put the quote up front. A normal human being would have ordered the sentence along the lines of, “Mitch Romen announced today that the first ever packet router is now available to technology professionals.” (I’ve trimmed the supplements.) Not a run-on.

The trouble came when he inverted the clauses to simulate a direct quote (The first ever packet router is now available to technology professionals, Mitch Romen announced.), then decided to introduce more passive voice by pushing Mitch Romen all the way to the wall with an expletive structure (The first ever ... professionals, it was announced by Mitch Romen.)

All these pointless machinations (complete with a few extra supplementary clauses crammed in just to make sure the sentence was bursting with fruity flavor) do not create a comma splice, just the illusion of one.

And Eats Shoots & Leaves is to grammar books what The DaVinci Code is to great literature. But I’ve probably been pedantic enough for one day. 

I wondered when someone would make that argument. Yes, the person is pushing the news up front and the attribution to the end, and “it” isn’t meant to be a standalone sentence. But that doesn’t give one license to string together two independent clauses with a comma.  I’m willing to be wrong, but ya gotta quote chapter and verse of a reputable grammar book that could save this construction.  (And it doesn’t have to be The Eats & Shoots Code...which, if it offends you, I recommend staying away from The Transitive Vampire.

sheesh!  you people are crazy!  As long as I can “get” what the person is saying ... that’s ALL that REALLY matters.

Nothing short of a superteam made up of the Pope, Ghandi, and Jim Morrison could save that sentence from eternal damnation. But it’s sins are different (and worse) than that of being a run-on.

According to the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (somewhere in Chap 11, I think, but I could be wrong since my copy is propping up a fishtank at the moment), a typical sentence of indirect reported speech is analyzed as a main clause followed by a supplementary content clause preceded by a comma. By typical, I mean something like “I love you, she said.”

That some perverts out there would declaim such passion by writing “I love you, it was said by her to me” is a sad comment on what journalism schools have done to our notion of what’s important in a sentence, but it doesn’t alter the fundamental analysis.

And just bought The Deluxe Transitive Vampire a few months ago. Love the mission, love the analysis, found the execution to be a bit tedious, but it was worth my $60. Truss, on the other hand, I didn’t get anything out of that I don’t already get by sitting around with fellow grammar geeks and haughtily mocking the inferior syntax of whatever menu we’re ordering from.

And holy shit before anyone lights up a stake, yes I inadvertantly put an apostrophe into a possessive its.

That is one of the funniest posts I’ve ever read.  Thank you for sharing. 

Chris, I’ve never been a full-time journalist, so maybe your rule is followed in some quarters.  From a business writing perpsective, I can say that the AP stylebook does not support your view.  If it’s a direct quote, it should be:

“I love you,” she said.  (With quotations)

Or:

She said that she loved him. 

Reported speech without quotation marks in the way you have it simply becomes confusing, and hence a run-on sentence.

lols @ “poopsmith"…

I agree with Chris M - that sentence should be taken out behind the barn and shot, but it’s not a run-on.  His analysis in his post of Dec. 2 at 8:47 PM is supported by my copy of Webster’s Standard American Style Manual (Rule 7 for double quotation marks, p. 41), which states that “Quotation marks are not used to enclose paraphrases.” (citing as an example, “Build a better mouse trap, Emerson says, and the world will beat a path to your door").

ya know, i can be compassionate to a fault but my tolerance of stupidity in supposedly professional people is decreasing exponentially these days.