What is a Sentence Fragment?

Whether you’re still learning how to construct sentences in English or a seasoned writer looking for a refresher, you need to understand sentence fragments. A sentence fragment is a group of words that looks like a sentence but doesn’t make sense on its own. Sentence fragments are incomplete sentences that cannot stand alone.

Why Sentence Fragments Are Problematic

Sentence fragments are problematic because they can create confusion. When readers come across a sentence fragment, they have to fill in the blanks and try to guess what the missing information is. This can make it difficult to correctly understand the author’s thoughts, which can lead to misunderstandings. Sentence fragments can also make writing appear sloppy, as they don’t provide the full picture.

How to Spot and Improve Sentence Fragments

To spot a sentence fragment look for clues such as beginning the sentence with a capital letter but the presence of missing information. For example, consider the sentence “Took the bus downtown.” On its own, this sentence does not make sense, as there is context missing. To make it a complete sentence, you would need to include who or what took the bus downtown, for example “John took the bus downtown.”

To turn a sentence fragment into a complete sentence, you need to add missing information. This can be done by adding an independent clause, subject, or verb. Alternatively, you can combine two sentence fragments into a complete sentence by connecting them with a conjunction such as “and,” “but,” “who,” “which,” “because,” etc. For example, consider the two sentence fragments “John was late” and “He missed the bus”. These two fragments can come together as “John was late because he missed the bus.”

Conclusion

Sentence fragments are incomplete sentences which cannot stand on their own, resulting in confusion for the reader. To spot and improve sentence fragments, look for clues such as missing information and capital letters, then add a subject, verb, or independent clause to complete the sentence. You can also connect two sentence fragments with a conjunction to make a complete sentence.