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:
![sentence fragment english meaning sentence fragment english meaning](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/60/45/1b/60451bcef3cc00dca9ce9ea3312f2097.png)
However, since there’s no reason to use a sentence fragment here, it would be better to remove the period and join the clauses with a comma: Here, the clause that starts with “Including” is a fragment, though we can guess that it’s a list of birds included in the study. In other cases, we might understand what the author means by a sentence fragment, but unless there is a good reason for using one, it is still better to write in full sentences. As such, this fragment would need completing before it makes sense. Here, there’s obviously something missing from the sentence, since “because” is meant to introduce a reason. Sentence fragments become an issue when it is hard to tell what someone is saying.
![sentence fragment english meaning sentence fragment english meaning](https://majid-najafi.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/4-common-English-sentence-structures.jpg)
![sentence fragment english meaning sentence fragment english meaning](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/day11grammarfragmentpresentation-131007145625-phpapp01/95/day-11-grammar-fragment-presentation-2-638.jpg)
And you’ll find them used in advertising and pop culture all the time! As long as you can understand them, this isn’t a problem.
![sentence fragment english meaning sentence fragment english meaning](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/b2/d2/57/b2d257b91006bb5b88189908e32d13d4--sentence-fragments-sentences.jpg)
More generally, we all use sentence fragments in our own lives. But by using a period instead of a comma, the author adds a dramatic pause before the fragment to emphasize how loud the budgie is. In the second, “But loud” is technically a sentence fragment. No Fragment: The budgie was small, but loud.įragment: The budgie was small. Your e-mail address Subscribe Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter!