Sentence Fragments

What is a complete sentence?

A sentence fragment may look like a sentence but it is not a sentence. A sentence fragment cannot stand on it's own as a complete sentence

A sentence fragment may:

Be missing it's subject (Ex. Who ran?)

Be missing it's verb (Ex. My favorite teacher.)

Is just a phrase (Ex. For better or worse.)

Is an abandoned clause (Ex. When my mother married my father)

Misusing phrases like: such as, for example, or especially (Ex. Such as, my brother was practicing martial arts)

Attach it to a complete sentence

If we write "The front door is locked. Use the back door." We can combine these two sentences to get a complete sentence "The front door is locked, use the back door" by adding a comma where the period once was

Revise it by adding what it is missing

"Lies around all day." is missing a subject so let's add one, "John lies around all day." John is a noun and is the one who lies around so therefore he is our subject.

Rewrite it

We can rewrite our sentences in different ways to make them complete

Instead of writing something like "A book without a cover." Which is a sentence fragment we can write, "The book had no cover." Which is a more complete sentence as it has a subject (book), verb (had), and an object (cover).

Next lesson we are going to be covering run-on sentences

A run-on sentence is when two independent clauses (or complete thought) are connected.

For the next lesson think about how this is a run-on sentence and come prepared with an answer:

 I love to write papers I would write one every day if I had the time.