{"id":10899,"date":"2016-01-15T21:18:23","date_gmt":"2016-01-15T21:18:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/?p=10899"},"modified":"2019-09-05T15:58:16","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T15:58:16","slug":"gmat-grammar-weekly-fanboys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/blog\/gmat-grammar-weekly-fanboys\/","title":{"rendered":"GMAT Grammar Weekly: FANBOYS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blog-fanboys\"Join us every other\u00a0week for a commonly-tested grammar factoid that will improve both your accuracy and your confidence on GMAT Sentence Correction. \ud83d\udcd6\ud83d\udcdd<\/em><\/p>\n

Do you ever find yourself going on and on? And on? And on? Sentences can do the same. Sometimes\u00a0 it works, but often it doesn\u2019t. Let\u2019s talk about when a GMAT sentence is a run-on (grammatically incorrect) and when it\u2019s just very long (but grammatically correct).<\/p>\n

A run-on sentence<\/strong> is any sentence that smushes two independent clauses together. Let\u2019s take two simple clauses as an example.<\/p>\n

Clause 1: Sara is wearing a purple shirt. Clause 2: She is wearing pink pants.<\/p>\n

Both are independent clauses (meaning they can stand alone as their own sentence), but bring them together and trouble ensues:<\/p>\n

Sara is wearing a purple shirt, she is wearing pink pants.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not only a fashion faux pas, but also a grammatical one. So, how to fix it? FANBOYS to the rescue! Any of these seven simple conjunctions will turn a run-on sentence into a compound, and correct, sentence.<\/p>\n

F\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For<\/p>\n

A\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And<\/p>\n

N<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Nor<\/p>\n

B<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But<\/p>\n

O<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Or<\/p>\n

Y<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yet<\/p>\n

S<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So<\/p>\n

Try it: Sara is wearing a purple shirt, yet she is wearing pink pants. Now we\u2019re talking!<\/p>\n

Now you know what FANBOYS are, but it\u2019s time to talk GMAT. GMAT sentences are often incredibly complex, so we have to break down the complexity. Let\u2019s practice on a much more complicated sentence:<\/p>\n

After watching the documentary, Joe and Aaron, who had been friends since elementary school, stayed up most of the night talking about the pros and cons of the country\u2019s leadership, which had been the subject of much criticism throughout the movie, they decided that many of the conclusions the documentary made were fallacious.<\/p>\n

Take a moment to break this very long sentence down to it\u2019s core. Find the main subject and verb (more on how to do this in the Sentence Correction Strategy Guide<\/a> if you need more help). Start by eliminating all the modifiers:<\/p>\n

After watching the documentary,<\/span> Joe and Aaron, who had been friends since elementary school,<\/span> stayed up most of the night talking about the pros and cons of the country\u2019s leadership, which had been the subject of much criticism throughout the movie,<\/span> they decided that many of the conclusions the documentary made were fallacious.<\/p>\n

Already, we have a much simpler sentence. Keep breaking it down until you see the main subject-verb: \u201cJoe and Aaron stayed up.\u201d But we have a problem. The last clause is \u201cThey decided.\u201d Both of those clauses are independent, so we should look for one of the FANBOYS. \u00a0Go ahead and look, but you won\u2019t find. We\u2019ve come across the fatal error of this sentence. Insert one of the FANBOYS, and you\u2019ve got a sentence:<\/p>\n

After watching the documentary, Joe and Aaron, who had been friends since elementary school, stayed up most of the night talking about the pros and cons of the country\u2019s leadership, which had been the subject of much criticism throughout the movie, AND they decided that many of the conclusions the documentary made were fallacious.<\/p>\n

So Grammar tip of the week in a nutshell: FANBOYS are used to turn run-on sentences into compound sentences.\u00a0\ud83d\udcdd<\/p>\n

\n

\"Emily<\/a><\/p>\n

Emily Madan<\/a> is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in Philadelphia.\u00a0<\/strong>Having scored in the 99th percentile of the GMAT (770) and LSAT (177), Emily is committed to helping others achieve their full potential.\u00a0In the classroom, she loves bringing concepts to life and her greatest thrill is that moment when a complex topic suddenly becomes clear. Check out Emily\u2019s upcoming GMAT courses here<\/a>. Your first class is always free!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Join us every other\u00a0week for a commonly-tested grammar factoid that will improve both your accuracy and your confidence on GMAT Sentence Correction. \ud83d\udcd6\ud83d\udcdd<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[929,26,10],"tags":[233,267,975,341,353,380,384,386,976,392,52750],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-10899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gmat-prep","category-sentence-correction","category-verbal-on-gmat","tag-gmat","tag-gmat-grammar","tag-gmat-grammar-sentence-correction","tag-gmat-sentence-correction","tag-gmat-study-tips","tag-gmat-verbal","tag-gmat-verbal-sentence-correction","tag-gmat-verbal-tips","tag-gmat-vergal-grammar","tag-graduate-management-admission-test","tag-sentence-correction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10899"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10939,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10899\/revisions\/10939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10899"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=10899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}