16 Fragments

Let’s start this chapter with — a pop quiz!

Fragments

The word fragment means a piece of something, not the whole thing. When I think of fragments, I think of a broken egg shell, like this one:

All those little pieces are fragments of the shell. They are parts of the whole thing.

Sentence fragments are the same kind of thing: they are words that may have some of the three required components of a sentence but not all of them. The following groups of words are all fragments.

Sailed into the rough seas.

• • • missing a subject

Yalmaz, charging across the field.

• • • missing a verb (charging is an impostor verb)

If Alex completes their exam early.

• • • does not express a complete thought

Fixing Fragments

If a fragment is missing required elements of a sentence, then the best way to fix them is to add whatever required elements are missing.

EXAMPLE 1:

Into the rough seas.

This one is missing a subject, so let’s add that component.

The boat sailed into the rough seas.

EXAMPLE 2:

Yalmaz, charging across the field.

This one is missing a verb. The -ing verb charging doesn’t count. Let’s add a proper verb.

Yalmaz charged across the field.

Yalmaz is charging across the field.

EXAMPLE 3:

If Alex completes their exam early.

This last one is the most common type of fragment; it’s a dependent clause. As we know from the previous chapter, a dependent clause isn’t a sentence on its own. You need to add an independent clause beside it to complete the sentence. Let’s do that.

If Alex completes their exam on time, they will have time to double-check their answers^[1].