Sentence fragments: Overview
A sentence fragment is a word group that pretends to be a sentence. It is punctuated like a sentence and has some elements of a sentence, but it is not complete. In formal written English, an unintentional fragment is considered a major grammatical error.
To be complete, a sentence must have at least one independent clause.
Recognizing fragments
Sentence fragments are easy to recognize when they appear out of context, like these:
When fragments appear next to related sentences, they can be hard to spot.
Fixing fragments
You can repair most fragments in one of two ways:
- Pull the fragment into a nearby sentence.
- Turn the fragment into a sentence.
Multilingual: Sentence fragments
Exercises:
Related topics: