![]() All the same, he was determined to amaze us. For example:Įxample No one thought that Eric could make the jump it was just too high. Bloggers, journalists, and fiction writers often use them. ![]() With that said, a fragment within a clear context can sometimes serve a useful dramatic purpose. You should always avoid sentence fragments in a formal situation and in academic writing. For instance, you could hide under their beds and wait for the dark.īoth remedies result in structurally sound sentences. If semicolons seem too formal for your purpose, you could write your text as two sentences-but remember to make sure the second one has a subject and a verb:Įxample There are many ways to frighten little brothers. Notice in the above example that by doing this, you will need to edit other parts of your fragment to make it a grammatically correct independent clause. To put it another way, you need to reinforce the fragment with a subject and verb to turn it into a sentence. Notice that to properly connect these two clauses with a semicolon, you need to do some rewriting to ensure that they both function as independent clauses. Consider the following:Įxample There are many ways to frighten little brothers for instance, you could hide under their beds and wait for the dark. Mending a sentence fragment involves one of two things: giving it the components it lacks or fastening it onto an independent clause. Fragments can sound as though they were carelessly spat out. It’s a minuscule psychological difference, but if you are corresponding in a formal setting, it’s worth taking the time and care to write a complete sentence. Adding the subject will build a more substantial, more confident-sounding sentence:Įxample I am looking forward to seeing you. Staying away from sentence fragments not only makes your writing easier to read, but it can also make you sound more refined in polite correspondence. A famous example of a short-but-complete sentence is “Jesus wept.” Nothing in the sentence needs any further explanation. I ran might be a short thought, but it has a subject (I) and a verb (ran). But this doesn’t mean that short sentences can’t be complete. In that example, creating a longer sentence was the easy solution. Here, the fragment has become a dependent clause attached to a sentence that has a subject (the wedding) and a verb (was canceled). To complete it, we need further explanation:Įxample Because of the hurricane, the wedding was canceled. ![]() It leaves us pondering what happened because of the hurricane. On its own, because of the hurricane does not form a complete thought. Here’s a glaring example of a sentence fragment: However, for a sentence to truly be complete, it must contain an independent clause, which tells the entire story even when isolated from its context. The only things a series of words needs are a capital letter at the beginning and punctuation at the end and boom! It looks like a sentence. We sometimes fail to recognize our sentence fragments because our incomplete thoughts can very easily pose as a sentence. Simply put, a sentence fragment is a clause that falls short of true sentencehood because it’s missing one out of three critical components: a subject, a verb, and a complete thought. ![]() Newman decided not to inform them that his catch was a result of pure _ he had found the error only because he had accidentally selected the wrong software to edit that day.No one escapes high school English without being penalized for writing a sentence fragment here and there, and unfortunately not everyone remembers what they are and how to fix them. He assumed that management, upon hearing the bad news, would _ him to a demeaning job in the mail room, but to his surprise, the bosses were overjoyed that Newman had spotted the error before any major damage had been done. He had to inform the higher _ that what began as a _ typographical error in the company's software was now threatening the stability of the entire company network however, Newman himself was responsible for the error. Some words will not be used.Ĭerebral relegate echelon serendipity conundrum malinger nondescript \beginĬerebral conundrum relegate malinger echelon nondescript serendipity From the list below, supply the words needed to complete the paragraph.
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