An independent clause contains a subject and verb. Also, an independent clause expresses a complete thought. The sentence "Leo walked to the coffee shop for his mother" is an example of an independent clause. A fused, commonly called run-on sentence consists of two independent clauses in a sentence that isn't separated by punctuation. Thus, combining the sentences "Leo walked to the coffee shop for his mother" and "he hates using fancy language to order her coffee" creates a run-on sentence. To avoid the common error, you can use punctuation such as a period, colon or semicolon to separate the combined sentences.
When combining sentences another problem arises when using a comma in the wrong area of a sentence. A comma splice consists of using a comma between two independent clauses. The sentence "I hate writing this paper, it is very boring" is an example of a comma splice. A writer can fix a comma splice sentence in three ways. You can change the comma to a period to make two separate sentences. You can change the comma to a semicolon. Also, you can change one of the independent clauses to a dependent one and place a dependent marker in front of it. Dependent markers consist of words such as "before," "even though," "in order to," "since," "unless," "because," "when" or "while." Therefore the sentence about the paper changes to: "I hate writing this paper because it is very boring."
A sentence fragment occurs when a writer treats either an incomplete thought or a dependent clause as a complete sentence. For example, the dependent clause "because I hate tests" doesn't express a complete thought or explain anything. However, a writer may make the mistake of considering it a complete sentence. Instead you can avoid writing a fragment sentence by combining the sentence with another one or removing the dependent marker.
When combining sentences, a writer may eliminate or forget to add a word. Consider the combined sentence: "Everyone laughed as Leo ordered his mother's coffee he was mad." The word "and" was left out the sentence, which made the combined sentence confusing. A way to avoid the common error of missing words involves troubleshooting, or proofreading, work.