I
took yesterday off. I mean: I didn’t have to deliver pizzas; I didn’t vacuum; I
didn’t do dishes or laundry; I ignored the kids; I left my wife to her own
devices. I read a few Raymond Carver short stories, watched some TV, and played
way too much Candy Crush. I hate that game, but it was a glorious day off from
everything, and I certainly didn’t get any writing done. Any thoughts on
grammar yesterday evaporated with my morning coffee, that is for sure.
But
shall we continue? Today’s grammar error is number 12: the sentence fragment.
And
we all remember what a sentence is, right?
A
sentence has to have at least two elements: a subject and a verb. Without
either the subject or the verb, you don’t have a sentence. Instead, you have a
fragment.
·
The
dog the cat.
·
The
dog.
·
The
chased the cat.
·
Chased
the cat.
·
The
cat.
All
of that above, sentence fragments. They’re wrong. Don’t do it.
7 Types of Fragments
There
are actually seven different types of fragments.
·
Prepositional
Phrase
·
Appositional
Phrase
·
Participial
Phrase
·
Gerund
Phrase
·
Infinitive
Phrase
·
Adjective
Clause
·
Adverb
Clause
These
are all elements found within a complete complex sentence. All of them are
potential sentence fragments.
We’ve
already talked about what
a preposition word is. The prepositional phrase includes the prepositional word
and the phrase connected to that word.
In
spite of having done nothing yesterday, I enjoyed my day.
An
appositional phrase is a noun-based element lacking a verb.
On my day off, yesterday, I did nothing.
A
participial phrase is a non-restrictive
element, usually beginning with a past tense verb and acts like an
adjective.
I enjoyed my day
off, covered in awesome sauce.
A
gerund phrase begins with a verb ending in ing.
Note that this ing verb or gerund is
not a verb. The gerund acts like a noun.
I earn money on
the weekends, delivering pizzas.
An
infinitive phrase uses the infinitive form of a verb (to eat, to walk, to run,
to sleep, etc.)
I deliver pizzas
to earn money.
An
adjective clause begins with who, which, or that and describes the noun or the subject of the main clause of
the sentence.
I had the day
off from my pizza delivery job that I
normally work on weekends.
The
adverb clause begins, normally, with because,
if, although, and when and
describes the sentence’s verb.
When
the weekend rolls around, I go to work.
All
of these, if left alone, are fragments:
·
In
spite of having done nothing yesterday.
·
Yesterday.
·
Covered
in awesome sauce.
·
Delivering
pizzas.
·
To
earn money.
·
That
I normally work on weekends.
·
When
the weekend rolls around.
So
don’t do any of the above.
Famous Fragments
But
check these out:
·
Classic.
A book which people praise and don’t read. – Mark Twain
·
Memory
… All alone in the moonlight –from Cats!
·
Farewell,
fair cruelty – William Shakespeare, Twelfth
Night
·
LONDON.
Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn
Hall. Implacable November weather. –Charles Dickens, Bleak House
·
Scared
sick looking at it. – Ernest Hemingway, In
Our Time
·
Above
all Lucy. A risk to own anything: a car, a pair of shoes, a packet of
cigarettes. Not enough to go around. Not enough cars, shoes, cigarettes. Too
many people, too few things. –J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace
·
The
preflight pep talk. – James Ellroy, The Cold Six Thousand
There’s
a common thread running through the above examples: they’re all from fiction
authors: not academic writing, not newspaper writing, and not technical
writing. For example, how many sentence fragments can you find in William
Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! ?
And,
can you think of another style of writing that utilizes fragments to a great
effect? Here’s a hint:
The Better
Picker-upper!
No comments:
Post a Comment