Sentence fragments are a common grammatical error that can easily be avoided and fixed. In this blog post, I share what they are and how to correct them.
Read these sentences:
- “Went to the school.”
- “He and Alfred.”
Do they make sense? Do these sentences sound complete?
I really, really hope you say no. The reason being is that those sentences are fragments. They are only one part of a complete sentence.
“Huh?” you might be thinking right now.
Let me explain in more detail.
What are Subjects and Predicates?
Complete sentences are composed of a subject and a predicate.
A subject (the vast majority of the time) is the beginning part of the sentence and states who or what the sentence is talking about.
The predicate is the second half of the sentence and states what the subject is doing; it tells what action the subject is doing.
For example, in sentence number 2 (above), it says “He and Alfred.” These two words, if you remember the parts of speech, are nouns.
Since these two words are nouns, they are stating who the sentence is talking about, thus making it a subject.
As for sentence number 1, it is a predicate.
It’s a predicate because there is a verb (“went”) in it, stating what the subject is doing (or the action of the subject) if there was one.
Okay, so now that you understand the concept of subjects and predicates, I will explain what fragments are.
What are Sentence Fragments?
In English grammar, sentence fragments are sentences that are incomplete. They are either missing a subject or a predicate, or they are missing a noun or a verb.
All sentences must have a subject and a predicate to be complete. Otherwise, they will be fragments.
An easy way to find out if your sentence is complete or not is by asking:
- Does this sentence talk about someone or something? Who or what is it talking about?
- Does this sentence tell what that someone or something is doing? What is the action of the subject?
If you are able to answer these two questions clearly, then your sentence is complete.
Do you understand everything? Good.
Here’s a little recap:
- A complete sentence has to have a subject and a predicate
- A subject is who or what the sentence is talking about
- A predicate tells the action of the subject
- A sentence fragment is when a sentence is missing either a subject or predicate
Practice
Now that you’re all knowledgeable and stuff about sentence fragments, give these practice questions a try. All you have to do is spot the fragment and point it out:
- I have to go to work tomorrow at 8 o’clock.
- Dante and his group of friends.
- Where are the reports I asked for?
- Chad and his parents travel across South America.
Which one is it?
If you found these questions helpful, you can find more of them (and ones with more detail and complexity) in workbooks, which you can find at my store here.
Final Thoughts
Sentence fragments are common grammar mistakes that many people make.
Sometimes, they don’t realize that their sentence is incomplete. Sometimes, they’re careless during the proofreading and editing process.
But, similar to run-on sentences, the good thing is that sentence fragments are easy to fix (well, they’re a tad more difficult, but not complex).
You just have to recognize the error and figure out if you need to add a subject or a predicate, add it, and voila, it is fixed!
P.S.
For the practice questions, no. 2 is the fragment. The rest are complete sentences.