SENTENCE: A Jane of all trades, Angela wears several hats: she’s an athlete, a writer, and a doctor. Angela wears several hats, an athlete, a writer. SENTENCE: Loving his country so much takes a toll on his personal life.įRAGMENTS: A Jane of all trades. Also, don’t forget to remove unnecessary words that don’t contribute to the meaning of the sentence.įRAGMENT: By loving his country so much takes a toll on his personal life. In addition to the aforementioned methods of fixing sentence fragments, sometimes you’ll need to rewrite the fragments to form a complete sentence. Rewrite a sentence fragment to form a complete thought. SENTENCE: Forgiving and big-hearted, Mindy married Barry after all his misgivings. SENTENCE: He forgot to buy the supplies I need : paint brush, manila paper, and glue stick.įRAGMENT: Mindy married Barry after all his misgivings. Paint brush, manila paper, and glue stick. Fuse a sentence fragment and an independent clause by inserting a punctuation between them.įRAGMENT: He forgot to buy the supplies I need.
įRAGMENT: People believing he is god-sent. SENTENCE: The handsome mailman drives a pink bike. SENTENCE: Mark and his drunk friend caused chaos at the party. Supply the missing subject, verb, or thought.įRAGMENT: Caused chaos at the party. In the following examples, the sentence fragments are in bold while the added phrases and clauses are italicized. You can do any of the following to achieve that: Supply the missing subject or verb fuse the fragment and a nearby independent clause using a punctuation or rewrite the whole fragment to form a sentence. The main goal of fixing a sentence fragment is to complete its thought. Related Reading: Conjunctions – Connecting Words and Phrases Fix Sentence Fragments: SENTENCE: Since we won, we have earned their respect. SENTENCE: His world fell apart when she left. Here are more examples of fragments:įRAGMENT: When she left. Īlthough shorter, the above example is a sentence, just like these: “She left,” “We won,” and “I do.” Be cautious to distinguish fragments from sentences.
Notice that removing the subordinating conjunction also leaves us with a sentence or an independent clause. Now the fragment officially serves as a subordinate clause of the independent clause, which has a subject (he), verb (didn’t see), and object (the meteor shower). SENTENCE: He didn’t see the meteor shower because he arrived late. The incomplete thought in the fragment leaves us with the question: What happened because he arrived late? To complete it, insert an independent clause. The best example of a sentence fragment is a subordinate clause (also called a dependent clause) removed from its independent clause and made to stand alone. Although they appear complete, they’re only pieces of a sentence detached from an independent clause. Sentence fragments are clauses or phrases that lack the components of a sentence. Recall from your basic English lessons that a sentence consists of a subject, verb, and complete thought, therefore the absence of any of these leads to sentence fragments. What is a Sentence Fragment?Ī group of words marked by a period isn’t automatically a sentence.
Fragment examples how to#
Now we know what the initial clause ("Even though.") is subordinate to.Let’s learn how to identify and fix a sentence fragment. Notice that now we have added an independent clause (a clause that can stand as a sentence on its own) to this sentence. found").Įven though he worked tirelessly, he failed to complete his paper. Now our sentence has a verb to match our subject ("the students. Some of the students working in the lab found extra supplies. We now know what occurred during the time specified by "During the night". Now that we have looked at these sentences as fragments, let's take a look at how they would look completed *A subordinate clause almost always will begin with a prepositional phrase (e.g., "even though", "despite", "although") This fragment actually contains a subject-verb relationship (he worked), but the phrase "even though" makes it clear that this is a subordinate clause*, and therefore it needs another clause to complete the sentence.
Remember, for an -ing verb to be an action, it must be immediately preceded by another verb (e.g., we are working). This clause identifies a subject, but doesn't explain what the subject is doing. Notice that this clause locates something in time/space, but doesn't tell us what is happening. Typically, a fragment lacks a subject-verb relationship.įor example, these are a few sentence fragments: A sentence fragment occurs when a sentence is missing one of the key parts necessary for it to be a complete sentence.
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