Sentence fragments are frequently employed successfully in poetry, like in this Basho haiku. Advertising agencies and copywriters utilize sentence fragments frequently to add "punch" to their material. It adds a conversational tone to the message, making it more personable and less official.
Fragments can also be effective when writing narrative non-fiction, such as journalism. They can be used to give your story momentum and life while still allowing you to explain more detailed aspects of the topic later. For example, a writer might start a piece about sports with "Tom Brady is one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history," but then break off into a detailed explanation of his career after the first line of the article.
Finally, fragments can be useful when writing abstract or conceptual pieces. These types of articles tend to focus on many different topics within a single work, so using fragments helps the writer avoid being boring or repetitive. For example, a writer could begin an essay about friendship by saying "All friendships have conflicts that need to be resolved," but then follow up with several sentences about the effects of therapy on relationships before concluding that "the opportunity for real growth is what makes relationships worth having."
Sentence fragments can be effective tools for writers to use because they allow for great flexibility in word choice while still being clear and concise.
Use sentence fragments sparingly and only when necessary for the plot. In literature, sentence fragments can help to communicate speed, tone, and intensity. Overuse, on the other hand, may lead to sloppy writing—fragments should be used rarely and for appropriate storytelling purposes. Sentence fragments are often used in comic books, novels, and movies.
Some examples of good uses for sentence fragments include:
- Describing a scene or moment without using complete sentences. For example: "She looked up at him with fire in her eyes." (This is called an exclamation point.)
- When you want to make it clear that something important is being said but don't have time to write a full sentence. For example: "I am going to let you go now because I think you understand what I'm saying."
- When you want to add emotion to your story. For example: "The sound of my father's knife slicing through the air as he stabbed my mother was enough to send me into hysterics."
- When you want to show how angry someone is. For example: "Anger flashed across Tom's face."
- When you want to show that something terrible has happened but aren't sure exactly how.
Avoid utilizing sentence fragments in official writing or when writing to impress someone, such as your English grammar tutor or your boss. They lack the clarity of whole sentences and come seem as less professional. Many authors employ unfinished phrases or fragments from time to time. This is acceptable within a story or article, but if you are trying to communicate information in an official document, it is best to use complete sentences.
A sentence fragment can be identified by a period at the end of a sentence that is not followed by another sentence. These fragments often cause confusion as readers try to figure out what has been lost in the omission of the final punctuation mark. A reader may think that you have forgotten to finish a thought, so they begin to write down what they believe is the finished sentence.
For example, a writer might want to include a question at the end of a paragraph. Because questions don't require a closing punctuation mark, they tend to be written with a full stop. However, because this is not part of a larger sentence, the reader assumes that this is the end of the thought and begins typing their answer before realizing that they haven't seen a verb yet. The result is that the question remains unanswered.
This phenomenon can be avoided by using complete sentences wherever possible. It will help ensure that the message being sent by your writing is clear and doesn't confuse your readers.
A sentence fragment is one that lacks either a subject or a major verb. Some sentence fragments are the consequence of minor typographical mistakes or word omissions. They are frequently avoidable with proper proofreading. Other fragmentations result from the use of exclamation marks, question marks, and other forms of punctuation. Still others arise when we omit important parts of sentences to make them shorter.
The most common type of sentence fragment occurs when someone writes or types a sentence but leaves out some part of it. For example, they might leave out a main idea or the beginning of the sentence. Sometimes they are only missing a word or two. Often there are several ways to complete a sentence that cover the various possibilities for what was left out. For example, if someone were to write about my family vacation, they could say either "the vacation was great" or "vacation was great". Both statements are correct because you can replace "the" or "vacation" with another word or phrase that functions as an article or noun.
Another common type of sentence fragment occurs when someone uses an exclamation mark, question mark, or other form of punctuation in place of a word or phrase. For example, they might use "anyway", "nevertheless", or "still" instead of "any", "not", or "even though".
Fragments are unfinished sentences. Fragments are often sentence fragments that have been separated from the main phrase. For the newly joined sentence, further punctuation may be required. Here are several instances, with the pieces highlighted in red.
A fragment is a part of a sentence that is not enough to make a complete thought or idea. A fragment can be as small as a word or as large as a paragraph or more. Language teachers often use the term "fragment" to describe any part of a sentence that by itself does not make sense. For example, they will sometimes replace a noun with a pronoun when teaching grammar because doing so creates a fragment - one word instead of a complete thought.
In written language, a fragment appears as an incomplete sentence. It can be as simple as a sentence fragment (a sequence of words that doesn't make a full sentence) or it can be a clause (a single sentence element). Either way, a fragment lacks a subject and a verb. Unlike a typo, which can be corrected easily by most editors, fragments cannot be edited out of a document completely - they always leave some mark behind.
Writers create fragments all the time. A fragment can occur when you forget to add a period at the end of a sentence, leaving your reader wondering what you were going to say next.
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