Sentence Fragments

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Sentence Fragments

• How To Deal

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What are sentence fragments you might ask?
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Sentence fragments are incomplete sentences.
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• Sentence Fragments are incomplete for many
  reasons.
• They lack a subject
• They are missing a verb
• It is a dependent clause

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Here are some examples. Subject missing The
fruit in the picture looks so real. Almost good
enough to eat. Verb missing These are all well
known athletes. Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady, and
Shawn Green. Dependent clause Im all out of
money. Which means I can not go shopping.
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Why do sentence fragments come up you might ask?
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• They come up for a variety of reasons.
• You are rushing to get a project finished
• You simply forgot the correct punctuation
• You dont know how to complete your thought, so
  you leave it as is

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How do you spot sentence fragments you might ask?
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Back to our examples
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Subject The fruit in the picture looks so real.
Almost good enough to eat. You can tell this
example is a sentence fragment because the
subject is not in the sentence. Almost good
enough to eat can not stand alone. The thought
that must go through your head is the question
What is almost good enough to eat? This will
help you to spot the sentence fragment for when
the subject is missing.
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Verb These are all well known athletes. Kobe
Bryant, Tom Brady, and Shawn Green. Kobe Bryant,
Tom Brady, and Shawn Green, when you read these
names in text, you might ask yourself the
question who are they? You need a verb to explain
who these people are.
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Another way to spot a missing verb is to use a
simple childrens method. What does a cat do? It
meows. The it meows is the verb.
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Dependent Clause When you look at our
example Im all out of money. Which means I can
not go shopping. Which means I can not go
shopping can not stand alone. We need to know
the why of the sentence. The why in our example
is why cant I go shopping?
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An easy way to spot sentence fragments is to ask
yourself these simple questions
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For subject you might ask yourself the
question Who or what are we talking about in the
sentence?
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For a verb you might ask yourself the
question, What is the subject doing?
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For a Dependent Clause you might ask yourself the
question, why did this happen?
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Now that you can spot them, your next question
might be
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How do you fix them you might ask?
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There are many ways to fix Sentence Fragments
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Back to our examples
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Subject The fruit in the picture looks so real.
Almost good enough to eat. One way to fix this
Sentence Fragment is by changing the grammar.
Changing periods into commas can be an excellent
way to fix your sentence fragments. The fruit in
the picture looks so real, almost good enough to
eat.
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Verb These are all well known athletes. Kobe
Bryant, Tom Brady, and Shawn Green. The way to
fix a missing verb is by switching the two parts
of our example. Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady, and
Shawn Green are all well known athletes. But
what if there is not a verb, you must create one
and place it with your subject.
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Creating verbs can be easy, just always make sure
your subject has an action to do. Example Sally
and her friends. What do Sally and her friends
always do? They always play outside. Play
outside is the action.
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Dependent Clause Im all out of money. Which
means I can not go shopping. To fix a dependent
clause simply attach it to an independent clause.
You can do this by using subordinate
conjunctions, which are simple words such as
whereas, while, though etc, or you can use
relative pronouns such as who, that, and which.
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Here is how our fixed sentence fragments
look Subject The fruit in the picture looks so
real, almost good enough to eat. Verb Kobe
Bryant, Tom Brady, and Shawn Green are all well
known athletes. Dependent clause I can not go
shopping because Im all out of money.
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Now that we know what fragments are, why they
occur, how to spot them and how to fix them. We
will now be able to minimize repeat performances
because once you are aware of a problem you most
likely wont repeat it, but if you do just
remember to ask yourself those simple
questions. Who or what are we talking about? What
is the subject doing? Why did this happen?
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And now you might ask is this the end?
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The End?
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How Well Do You Know Your SFs?
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Team Number 1 Which of these are sentence
fragments? Todays math lecture was so boring, I
fell asleep. Blue sky, white clouds, colorful
birds. Look how pretty it all is. The sky
outside is so beautiful. There should not be a
chance for rain. In the library. There are a lot
of books. Broke a leg. How can you fix the
sentence fragments mentioned above?
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Answers Todays math lecture was so boring, I
fell asleep. This is not a sentence
fragment. Blue sky, white clouds, colorful
birds. Look how pretty it all is. This is a
sentence fragment. The sky outside is so
beautiful. There should not be a chance for
rain. This is not sentence fragment. In the
library. There are a lot of books. This is a
sentence fragment. Broke a leg. This is a
sentence fragment.
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This is how the fixed sentence fragments can
look. Blue sky, white clouds, colorful birds.
Look, how pretty it all is. Correction Look at
how pretty the blue sky, white clouds, and
colorful birds are. In the library. There are a
lot of books Correction In the library, there
are a lot of books. Broke a leg. Correction
CSUNs mascot Matty Matador broke a leg when he
tripped down the library stairs.
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Team Number 2 Which of these are sentence
fragments? I walked the dog. The building was
demolished by four oclock. The airplane
crashed. Because of technical difficulties. The
Packers and the Panthers. What a good
game. Break a leg. How can you fix the sentence
fragments mentioned above?
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Answers I walked the dog. This is not a
sentence fragment. The building was demolished
by four oclock. This is not a sentence
fragment. The airplane crashed. Because of
technical difficulties. This is a sentence
fragment. The Packers and the Panthers. What a
good game. This is a sentence fragment. Break a
leg. This is not a sentence fragment. How can
you fix the sentence fragments mentioned above?
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This is how the fixed sentence fragments can
look.
The airplane crashed. Because of technical
difficulties. Corrections The airplane crashed
because of technical difficulties. The Packers
and the Panthers. What a good game. Corrections
Watching the Packers versus the Panthers was a
good game.
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Lets tally up the points.
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Thank You for your time and participation. We
greatly appreciate it. But most importantly we
would like to say
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Thank You to the Holt Handbook for your guidance
and support, we could not have done it without
you.