Sentence Fragments

Sentences are the most important units in writing. That sounds obvious, but think about the times that you've seen sentence
fragments and run-on sentences. When you include run-on sentences (sometimes called
fused sentences or comma splices) or unintended fragments in your writing, your writing takes on a very unprofessional appearance.

Here are some examples of fragments:

a. The excitement generated by
the speaker's visit.

b. Waiting in the apartment for our guests to come.

c. Because of the serious
unrest in the capital.

d. Although the Ambassador was
a fluent Portuguese speaker.

Remember that a complete
sentence includes four things:

• a subject,
• a verb,
• a capital letter at the
  beginning and
• punctuation at the end

Sentence a. is a fragment
because it lacks a verb. Be careful, there is a word that looks like
a verb! What about generated? Sorry,
generated does not function as a verb here.
It introduces the phrase that describes the
excitement.

The other three sentences are actually dependent
clauses. Here are some ways to fix these:

b. Waiting in the apartment for our guests to come we peeled the potatoes.

c. The army was mobilized because of the serious unrest in the capital.

d. Although the Ambassador was
a fluent Portuguese speaker, he continued to rely on an interpreter for
his first year in Brazil.

Creating Fragments with Subordinators

You may have heard someone call dependent clauses
"subordinate" clauses. "Because" and "although" are sometimes called
"subordinators" because they can make a perfectly good sentence into a
subordinate clause. This is what happend to d. above. A dependent or subordinate clause cannot
stand on its own. It needs an independent clause to make it a complete
sentence. The following are all independent clauses:

b. ...we peeled the potatoes.
c.
The army was mobilized ...
d. ...he continued to rely on an interpreter for
his first year in Brazil.

So remember, you always need the four elements listed above to make your sentences clear and understandable.