Scribd
Upload
175 views4 pages

Identifying Sentence Fragments 2 PDF

Uploaded by

Wasif
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
175 views4 pages

Identifying Sentence Fragments 2 PDF

Uploaded by

Wasif
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 4

Identifying Sentence Fragments

by Sophia Tutorial

 WHAT'S COVERED

This tutorial will explain how to identify sentence fragments and how to correct them. Specifically, we
discuss the following elements:
1. Fragments
2. Identifying Fragments
3. Fixing Fragments

1. Fragments
A sentence is made up of a subject plus a verb plus a full thought, so asentence fragment is just a fragment,
or a scrap of a sentence. It’s a phrase or a clause that does not meet all the criteria of a sentence. Most of the
time, these fragments are missing the subject. But sometimes they’ll be missing the verb instead.

 EXAMPLE See how there’s a verb and part of a thought, but the subject is missing? Who wanted to
cross the bridge?

Wanted to cross the bridge.

A common fragment sentence will be a dependent clause punctuated as if it were a full sentence. It may have
a subject and a verb, but the complete thought is missing. That word “because” is your clue that not
everything is here.

Because the river was frozen.

These sentence fragments are important to spot in your writing. Why? Because they can confuse your reader
with unclear, half-formed ideas.

 TERM TO KNOW

Sentence Fragment
A phrase or clause that does not meet all the criteria of a sentence.

© 2019 SOPHIA Learning, LLC. SOPHIA is a registered trademark of SOPHIA Learning, LLC. Page 1
2. Identifying Fragments
To identify a sentence fragment, ask yourself questions about a suspect sentence. These questions will help
you sort out if a sentence is a fragment or complete:

Does this sentence have a subject?


Does this sentence have a verb?
Does this sentence form a complete thought?

Since all complete sentences will include a subject, a verb, and a full thought, if you find yourself answering no
to any of those questions, well, then you’ve got a fragment sentence.

What if you’ve asked yourself all three questions and you still aren’t sure? Then you can use this trick. When
you read your sentence, tack on the phrase, “it is true that,” to the beginning of that sentence. If the sentence
still makes sense, then it’s complete. If it doesn’t, then you know you have a fragment.

It is true that + sentence

IN CONTEXT

Does this sentence have a subject? Yes, the cow. Does it have a verb? Again, yes, jumped. And is
this a full thought? Yes. So if we add, it is true that, to the beginning it’s still going to make sense.
And that means that all signs are pointing to a complete sentence.

The cow jumped over the moon.

It is true that the cow jumped over the moon.

How about this one? All that has changed is the word “when,” so you know there is a subject and a
verb. Is it a full thought? No. You can see that when you try your trick out, it doesn't make any sense.
when the cow jumped over the moon.

It is true that when the cow jumped over the moon.

3. Fixing Fragments
If your sentence is missing a subject or a verb, then all you have to do is add one in. Let’s try a sentence like
that and see if we can fix it.

IN CONTEXT

What are you missing? Do you see a subject? Yes, the cow. And wow, there’s a lot of information in
the sentence. Do you see any action? No. You’re missing the verb. So you can make this sentence
complete by adding in a verb. How about “sat”?

© 2019 SOPHIA Learning, LLC. SOPHIA is a registered trademark of SOPHIA Learning, LLC. Page 2
The big, brown cow in the field of grass.
The big, brown cow sat in te field of grass.

Here’s another. You have a verb (“ate”) and a noun (“spoon”), which could be the subject. But, is the
spoon doing the eating? No, so that is your clue that you’re missing the subject. It’s complete by
adding the word “she.”

Ate the soup with a spoon.


She at the soup with a spoon.

Here’s another kind of fragment, which is a dependent clause. You have a subject and a verb, but
the word “because” signals that this is meant to complete a thought that isn’t all here. When you
have a dependent clause punctuated like a sentence, it’s a fragment.

You’ll see this happen when the independent clause either follows or leads the dependent sentence
fragment in a paragraph. To correct this, you just need to pair this fragment sentence with an
independent clause to make it complete.

If you really wanted to, you could remove the subordinating conjunction (the word “because”), and
then the dependent clause will be complete. “She was hungry” is an independent clause, a full
sentence.

Because she was hungry.


She served herself soup. She was hungry.
She served herself soup because she was hungry.

SUMMARY

This tutorial demonstrated various ways a sentence can be fragmented. You learned how to identify
fragments by asking yourself three questions:
Does this sentence have a subject?
Does this sentence have a verb?
Does this sentence form a complete thought?
Once identified, fragments can be easily fixed by adding in the missing verb, subject, or removing a
subordinating conjunction such as as the word “because.”

Source: this work is adapted from sophia author martina shabram.

TERMS TO KNOW

Sentence Fragment
A phrase or clause that does not meet all the criteria of a sentence.

© 2019 SOPHIA Learning, LLC. SOPHIA is a registered trademark of SOPHIA Learning, LLC. Page 3
© 2019 SOPHIA Learning, LLC. SOPHIA is a registered trademark of SOPHIA Learning, LLC. Page 4

You might also like

pFad - Phonifier reborn

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


Alternative Proxies:

Alternative Proxy

pFad Proxy

pFad v3 Proxy

pFad v4 Proxy