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:
Subject
The fruit in the picture looks so real, almost good enough
to eat.
Verb
Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady, and Shawn Green are all well
known athletes.
Dependent clause
I 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.