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Course: Grammar > Unit 9
Lesson 2: Fragments and run-onsRecognizing fragments
A sentence fragment is a chunk of language that hasn’t made it all the way to being a working sentence; it might be missing a verb, or there might not be a subject. Learn how to turn a fragment into a sentence in this video!
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Is it possible for a grammatically correct sentence to have 2 or more predicates/subjects?(11 votes)
Yes, it is possible! Here are some examples:
2+ subjects
- Liam and Genesis are doing their homework.
- The cat, the dog, and the fish were hungry.
2+ predicates
- My baby sister laughed and cooed.
- The triathlete swims, bikes, and runs.
2+ subjects & 2+ predicates
- Dad and Uncle Oscar hunt and fish.
- Bodhi, Kai, and Luna sat and waited.
- The chef and her helper measured, mixed, and baked.
Hope this helps!(40 votes)
How do you identify fragments?(8 votes)
By listening to the lesson two more times, that skill will become natural to you, and you'll be able to identify them without giving it a second thought. So, listen again.(6 votes)
- i love how beth said hi people when she could say
hello everyone!(10 votes)
It is pretty funny but i think she could say something different than to what Paige normally says.(0 votes)
Are a fragment and a phrase basically the same thing?(5 votes)- No. They aren't the same thing, not remotely the same thing. A phrase is a group of words that functions as if it were a single word in a sentence.
EXAMPLE:
"The once and future king of comedy bombed at last night's show." In this example, the words, "The once and future king of comedy" are a noun phrase.
A fragment is a piece of communication that communicates something, but does not make a complete sentence,
EXAMPLE
"Who bombed at the show last night?"
"The once and future king of comedy"
In this example, "the once and future king of comedy" is a fragment.(8 votes)
Fragments can help set the tone of someone speaking, though. However, they are grammatically incorrect.
Can you still use them when writing a story?
"Green beans. Eat them NOW," Shelia snarled.(7 votes)
Yes, but it would depend on what you use. It could be:
"I.. won't!! Give. Up!!"
But if you say "Green beans. Eat them NOW," Shelia snarled, then it would most likely not be appropriate for your essay. However, if you want to use that sentence then it would be tacky and it might not be correct depending on how you use it Deleted_User. Anyways, yes you can say that depending on how you use it or take it. You could say:
As I was eating dinner I made sure to push away the vegetables with my fork, but my sister saw me. "Green beans. Eat them NOW," Shelia snarled.
You could NOT say:
"Green beans. Eat them NOW," Shelia snarled. Green beans I can't eat.
That wouldn't sound right and it would come out weird if you read it aloud in front of yourself or someone else. To sum it up, it is okay to do it but be careful or else you might write it wrong or incorrectly. Hope this helped!(2 votes)
- We stayed home.(Shouldn't be this a sentence itself without the "from school" part)(3 votes)
- You are right. It is a complete sentence without the additional part. But it doesn't communicate much. For example:
Everyone else went to the wedding. We stayed home.
After the earthquake, we stayed home.
The dogs were in the meadow, but we stayed home.
We stayed home because we didn't like the new preacher.
See how additional stuff communicates more? The three words are just fine in and of themselves, but they just don't say much without a bit of detail.(9 votes)
- Who is Beth is she Rosie or Paige(5 votes)
- Have you checked at the "our team" tab at the bottom of the page? That's where I recommend you to look.(3 votes)
- So a sentence fragment is just a phrase or a dependent clause but with a period?(4 votes)
Yep, sentence fragments are literally parts of a sentence that are dependent clauses - they need an independent clause to make sense.(4 votes)
- Hey... Kind of like a dependent clause!(5 votes)
So fragments are a part of a sentence predicate or subject? Is that true?(4 votes)- Fragments are incomplete sentences that lack either a subject or a predicate, or sometimes both. A subject is typically the noun or pronoun that performs the action of the sentence, while the predicate includes the verb and often provides information about the subject. So, fragments are not a part of either the subject or the predicate; rather, they are incomplete expressions that don't form a grammatically correct sentence on their own.
Let me give you a nice and fun example:
Imagine a sentence is like building a sandwich. The subject is the main ingredient, like peanut butter, and the predicate is the action, like spreading it on bread. Now, a fragment is like having just a slice of bread without anything on it. It's not a complete sandwich because it's missing either the peanut butter (the subject) or the spreading action (the predicate), or sometimes both. So, a fragment is like a half-made sandwich—it needs more to be a complete, tasty sentence!(0 votes)
Video transcript
- [Voiceover] Hello
grammarians, David here along with my cousin Beth who
also happens to be a teacher. Say hello to the people Beth. - [Voiceover] Hi people. - [Voiceover] So today we
are going to talk about sentence fragments, and
Beth you cover these in classes that you teach. Could you tell me please,
what is a sentence fragment? - [Voiceover] Great. A sentence fragment is when
a student writes a sentence and they think it's a sentence, but it's one that tells
maybe what happens, but doesn't include who,
or it might include who but doesn't tell what happens. - [Voiceover] So sentence fragments don't tell the whole story. The way I would put it, is that a fragment is a piece of a sentence
that cannot stand on its own, but nevertheless, incorrectly
ends with a period. So the whole story, for
instance, would be a fragment. This is a fragment. It could be a sentence but
it's missing something. Beth, what is it missing, what
is the whole story missing? - [Voiceover] Well we've got a subject but we don't have what we
would call a predicate, in other words, so we're giving a subject, but we're not telling what
happens to that subject. - [Voiceover] All right, so, the whole story began 10 years ago. And now we've got our subject
here, the whole story, and now we've given it a predicate. Similarly, if we just had this predicate, and we just said it began ten years ago, oh, that's not enough
to be a sentence either, that's also a fragment. Because now we've got a
predicate but no subject. - [Voiceover] Right, we're telling about something but we don't know what. - [Voiceover] So in
order to be a sentence, you need to have both a
subject and a predicate. So you need to have a thing, like a noun, or a pronoun, and then you
have to have something happen to that noun or pronoun,
or something performed by that noun our pronoun. Right so, like the pancakes,
period, is not a sentence. But the pancakes were delicious, is. - [Voiceover] So you've
got a part that names, that's your subject, and
then you've got the part that finishes the thought,
that's your predicate. - [Voiceover] Let's
look at another example. All right, what about
because of the snowstorm? Is that a sentence, Beth? - [Voiceover] Nope. - [Voiceover] Why not? - [Voiceover] Well you
don't tell what happened because of that snowstorm. - [Voiceover] So this is
what we call, not even a, I mean it's not even a
dependent clause, right? It, this thing doesn't
have, doesn't really have a subject or a verb. It's really just a prepositional phrase. So because of the snowstorm
something could happen, but we don't know what that is, so, because of the snowstorm,
we stayed home from school. So we've got this sentence here, this independent clause, right. We stayed home from school. And that's a subject and a predicate. And if it were just stayed
home from school, period, that wouldn't be a sentence. And if it were just we, period, that also wouldn't be a sentence. And if it were just because
of the snowstorm, period, that wouldn't be a sentence. It doesn't have enough
support to stand on its own. But all together, because
of the snowstorm, comma, we stayed home from school, period. That is a sentence. So in order to make sure that
you're building sentences you have to make sure that what you've got is a subject and a predicate. You gotta have a subject and
a verb, put 'em together, slap on a period, you've got a sentence. - [Voiceover] You've got some
good sentences there David. - [Voiceover] You can learn anything. David out. - [Voiceover] And Beth out.