![]() ![]() Some fragments are incomplete because they lack either a subject or a verb, or both. Sentence fragmentsĪ sentence fragment is an incomplete sentence. No matter how long or short the other sentence parts are, none of them can stand alone and make sense.īeing able to find the main subject, the main verb, and the complete thought is the first trick to learn for identifying fragments and run-ons. Wishing they’d brought their umbrella and dreaming of their nice warm bed, they waited for the bus all morning in the rain last Tuesday, determined to make it to class for their test.Īs your sentences grow more complicated, it gets harder to spot and stay focused on the basic elements of a complete sentence, but if you look carefully at the examples above, you’ll see that the main thought is still that they waited-one main subject and one main verb. Wishing they’d brought their umbrella, they waited for the bus all morning in the rain last Tuesday. They waited for the bus all morning in the rain last Tuesday. But independent clauses (i.e., complete sentences) can be expanded to contain a lot more information, like this: We can understand the idea completely with just those two words, so again, it’s independent-an independent clause. This sentence has a subject (They) and a verb (waited), and it expresses a complete thought. Some sentences can be very short, with only two or three words expressing a complete thought, like this: a complete thought (it can stand alone and make sense-it’s independent). ![]() A complete sentence has three components: What is a complete sentence? A complete sentence is not merely a group of words with a capital letter at the beginning and a period or question mark at the end. The basicsīefore we get to the problems and how to fix them, let’s take a minute to review some information that is so basic you’ve probably forgotten it. It will help you locate and correct sentence fragments and run-ons. If instructors have ever returned your papers with “frag,” “S.F.,” “R.O.,” or “run-on” written in the margin, you may find this handout useful. The reason is that they cannot afford to work part-time.Fragments and Run-ons What this handout is about ![]() (3) Many single parents leave their babies in day nurseries for the whole day. The solution is to either use a comma instead of a full-stop, as in (2), or to make the dependent clause into a sentence, as in (3): (2) Many single parents leave their babies in day nurseries for the whole day, because they cannot afford to work part-time. They have to be part of some larger structure, such as a main clause. The problem is that the second orthographic sentence (see definition below) is just a dependent clause, and dependent clauses cannot stand on their own. Because they cannot afford to work part-time. In (1) we can see a typical example of a sentence fragment: (1) Many single parents leave their babies in day nurseries for the whole day. The examples below are intended to show how a fragmentation can affect a sentence, and what can be done to improve the sentence in question. an orthographic sentence, see definition below), but which does not contain a main clause. Another way of putting this is to say that a fragmented sentence is something that starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop (i.e. A fragmented sentence is a sentence that cannot stand on its own, since it is not a complete sentence. ![]()
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