Capital Community College

Introduction
A sentence fragment tries its best to be a sentence, but it
just cant make it. Its missing something.
Often, its missing a verb or part of a
verb string:
John working extra hard on his
hook shot lately.
Here, for instance, were missing an
auxiliary has been, in this case, probably
that would complete the verb string and
the sentence.
Capital Community College
Incomplete Verb, Part Two
A sentence fragment tries its best to be a sentence, but it
just cant make it. Its missing something.
Spending hours every day after
school and even on weekends.
This time were missing a whole verb.
Spending is a participle wanting to modify
something, but there is no subject-verb
relationship within the sentence.
Often, its missing a verb or part
of a verb string:
Capital Community College
Avoiding Sentence Fragments
Sometimes a sentence fragment can give you a great deal
of information, but its 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 subject-verb 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 Sentence Fragments
Be alert for strings of prepositional phrases that never get
around to establishing a subject-verb 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 dont
contain a subject and verb.
Capital Community College
Avoiding Sentence Fragments
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 Sentence Fragments
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