"It kills 15,000 people a year and deludes vulnerable teenagers into thinking they look cool when in fact they just look like teenagers trying to look cool."
I DID NOT write this btw. I'm emailing a response to an article I read in the paper. I think this guys grammar isn't up to scratch, and his opinions infuriate me.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/its-enough-to-drive-you-to-drink-20100502-u1bq.html#comments
He compares Satanism to smoking, and says that Dianne Brimbles' murder was the result of a few sips of alcohol. She was drugged with 'Fantasy' and gang raped, she then died of a DRUG overdose. Not an alcohol related death.
Suggestion:
He could have worded it better but it's a complete sentence. He just had to many prepositional phrases in it used as conjunctions.
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You may not like the guy, but that does not appear to be a run-on sentence.
I love me some commas.
This is not a run-on, but it needs commas to be grammatically correct. It should read:
"It kills 15,000 people a year, and deludes vulnerable teenagers into thinking they look cool, when in fact they just look like teenagers trying to look cool."
The insertion of the term "and" makes it a compound and not a run-on. The last part, "when in fact…" is a modifying clause.
English Major and Peer Editor.