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A sentence fragment tries its best to be a sentence, but it
just can’t make it. It’s missing something.
Often, it’s missing a verb or part of a
verb string:
John working extra hard on his
hook shot lately.
Here, for instance, we’re missing an
auxiliary — has been, in this case, probably
— that would complete the verb string and
the sentence.
© Capital Community College
Incomplete V erb, Pa rt
Two
A sentence fragment tries its best to be a sentence, but it
just can’t make it. It’s missing something.
Often, it’s missing a verb or part
of a verb string:
Spending hours every day after
school and even on weekends.
This time we’re missing a whole verb.
“Spending” is a participle wanting to modify
something, but there is no subjectverb
relationship within the sentence.
© Capital Community College
Avoiding S entence
Fr agme nts
Sometimes a sentence fragment can give you a great deal
of information, but it’s still not a complete sentence:
After the coach encouraged him so
much last year and he seemed to
improve with each passing game.
Here we have a subjectverb relationship —
in fact, we have two of them — but the
entire clause is subordinated by the
dependent word after. We have no
independent clause.
© Capital Community College
Avoiding S entence
Fr agme nts
Be alert for strings of prepositional phrases that never get
around to establishing a subjectverb relationship:
Immediately after the founding of the
college and during those early years as
the predominant educational
institution in the American Midwest.
Again, be careful of sentences which give
their share of information but still don’t
contain a subject and verb.
© Capital Community College
Avoiding S entence
Fr agme nts
If you still have problems identifying sentence fragments
and repairing them, it might be helpful to review the
material in the Guide to Grammar and Writing on
CLAUSES
PHRASES
(and the types of sentences in)
SENTENCE VARIETY
© Capital Community College
Avoiding S entence
Fr agme nts
Now you never again will have trouble
with sentence fragments!
© Capital Community College
This PowerPoint presentation was created by
Charles Darling, PhD
Professor of English and Webmaster
Capital Community College
Hartford, Connecticut
copyright November 1999
© Capital Community College