Sentence Fragments

How To Deal

What are sentence

fragments you might ask?

Sentence fragments are

incomplete sentences.

Sentence Fragments are incomplete for many reasons.

•They lack a subject

•They are missing a verb

•It is a dependent clause

Here are some examples.

Subject missing:The fruit in the picture looks so real. Almost good enough to eat.

Verb missing:These are all well known athletes. Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady, and Shawn Green.

Dependent clause:I’m all out of money. Which means I can not go shopping.

Why do sentence fragments come up

you might ask?

They come up for a variety of reasons.

•You are rushing to get a project finished

•You simply forgot the correct punctuation

•You don’t know how to complete your thought, so you leave it as is

How do you spot sentence

fragments you might ask?

Back to our examples

Subject

The fruit in the picture looks so real. Almost good enough to eat.

You can tell this example is a sentence fragment because the subject is not in the sentence.

“Almost good enough to eat” can not stand alone. The thought that must go through your head is the question “What is almost good enough to

eat?”

This will help you to spot the sentence fragment for when the subject is missing.

Verb

These are all well known athletes. Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady, and Shawn Green.

Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady, and Shawn Green, when you read these names in text, you might

ask yourself the question who are they?

You need a verb to explain who these people are.

Another way to spot a missing verb is to use a simple children’s method.

What does a cat do?

It meows.

The “it meows” is the verb.

Dependent Clause

When you look at our example:

I’m all out of money. Which means I can not go shopping.

“Which means I can not go shopping” can not stand alone.

We need to know the why of the sentence. The why in our example is “why can’t I go

shopping?”

An easy way to spot sentence fragments is to

ask yourself these simple questions:

For subject you might ask yourself

the question:

Who or what are we talking about in the

sentence?

For a verb you might ask yourself the question,

What is the subject doing?

For a Dependent Clause you might ask yourself the

question,

why did this happen?

Now that you can spot them, your next question might

be…

How do you fix them you might ask?

There are many ways to fix Sentence Fragments

Back to our examples

Subject:

The fruit in the picture looks so real. Almost good enough to eat.

One way to fix this Sentence Fragment is by changing the grammar. Changing periods into commas can be an excellent way to fix

your sentence fragments.

The fruit in the picture looks so real, almost good enough to eat.

Verb:

These are all well known athletes. Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady, and Shawn Green.

The way to fix a missing verb is by switching the two parts of our example.

“Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady, and Shawn Green are all well known athletes.”

But what if there is not a verb, you must create one and place it with your subject.

Creating verbs can be easy, just always make sure your subject has an

action to do.

Example: Sally and her friends.

What do Sally and her friends always do?

They always play outside.

“Play outside” is the action.

Dependent Clause:

I’m all out of money. Which means I can not go shopping.

To fix a dependent clause simply attach it to an independent clause. You can do this by using subordinate conjunctions,

which are simple words such as whereas, while, though etc…, or you

can use relative pronouns such as who, that, and which.

Here is how our fixed sentence fragments look:

SubjectThe fruit in the picture looks so real, almost good enough

to eat.

VerbKobe Bryant, Tom Brady, and Shawn Green are all well

known athletes.

Dependent clauseI can not go shopping because I’m all out of money.

Now that we know what fragments are, why they occur, how to spot them and how to fix them.

We will now be able to minimize repeat performances because once you are aware of a problem you most likely won’t repeat it, but if you do just remember to ask yourself

those simple questions.

Who or what are we talking about?

What is the subject doing?

Why did this happen?

And now you might ask is this the end?

The End…?

How Well Do You Know Your SFs?

Team Number 1:

Which of these are sentence fragments?

Today’s math lecture was so boring, I fell asleep.

Blue sky, white clouds, colorful birds. Look how pretty it all is.

The sky outside is so beautiful. There should not be a chance for rain.

In the library. There are a lot of books.

Broke a leg.

How can you fix the sentence fragments mentioned above?

Answers:Today’s math lecture was so boring, I fell asleep.This is not a sentence fragment.

Blue sky, white clouds, colorful birds. Look how pretty it all is.This is a sentence fragment.

The sky outside is so beautiful. There should not be a chance for rain.This is not sentence fragment.

In the library. There are a lot of books.This is a sentence fragment.

Broke a leg.This is a sentence fragment.

This is how the fixed sentence fragments can look.

Blue sky, white clouds, colorful birds. Look, how pretty it all is.

Correction: Look at how pretty the blue sky, white clouds, and colorful birds are.

In the library. There are a lot of books

Correction: In the library, there are a lot of books.

Broke a leg.

Correction: CSUN’s mascot Matty Matador broke a leg when he tripped down the library stairs.

Team Number 2:Which of these are sentence fragments?

I walked the dog.

The building was demolished by four o’clock.

The airplane crashed. Because of technical difficulties.

The Packers and the Panthers. What a good game.

Break a leg.

How can you fix the sentence fragments mentioned above?

Answers:

I walked the dog.This is not a sentence fragment.

The building was demolished by four o’clock.This is not a sentence fragment.

The airplane crashed. Because of technical difficulties.This is a sentence fragment.

The Packers and the Panthers. What a good game.This is a sentence fragment.

Break a leg.This is not a sentence fragment.

How can you fix the sentence fragments mentioned above?

This is how the fixed sentence fragments can look.

The airplane crashed. Because of technical difficulties.Corrections: The airplane crashed because of technical difficulties.

The Packers and the Panthers. What a good game.Corrections: Watching the Packers versus the Panthers was a good game.

Lets tally up the points.

Thank You for your time and

participation. We greatly appreciate

it. But most importantly we

would like to say …

Thank You to the Holt

Handbook for your guidance

and support, we could not have done it without

you.