The humanities department of the community college where the author teaches has a long-standing policy regarding the demand for sentence-structure correctness in all the composition courses that they provide. That policy holds students accountable for total control over the rules that govern sentence structure. Any student paragraph or essay that contains one sentence error (comma splice, fused sentence, or fragment) cannot receive a grade higher than a C; two such errors result in a D; and three or more result in an automatic F. This is a demanding approach, but all the department members favor it, and all adjuncts must adhere to it. Their theory is that the sentence unit is the foundation upon which the paragraph and, subsequently, the entire essay are built, and they all acknowledge the consequences of a weak foundation. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the world works against them, even if there is no outright dispute over what they are trying to achieve. In this article the author shares his views and mentions instances in some reading materials that reflect liberties many published writers take with regards to grammar rules governing sentence structure.