17 Avoiding Fragments
Learning Objectives
- Identify sentence fragments.
- Correct sentence fragments.
What is a sentence in English?
Before we talk about fragments, we need to know what is considered a full sentence in English. As multilingual students, you already know that the sentence structure of English can be both similar to and different from the sentence structure of other languages, so it is important to review. To write a sentence in English, you need thse three elements:
- A subject
- A verb
- A complete idea
Let’s review what each of these elements are.
Subjects
Every sentence in English needs a subject. In most cases, the subject is at the beginning of a sentence. Let’s look at some examples.
| Subject | |
| The student | studies for the test. |
| Subject | |
| We | want to visit Florida. |
| Subject | |
| The teachers at the large public school | need to prepare their lessons. |
| Subject | |
| It | is a beautiful day. |
As you could see in all of these examples, the subject is at the beginning of the sentence before a verb. A subject can be just one word or much longer. The key is that it is positioned before a verb.
Verbs
You might have learned before that a verb is an “action.” This is often true, but not always. Verbs include actions like “run,” “write,” “learn,” etc., but there are also more abstract verbs like “be” and “appear.” Basically, verbs usually follow a subject and may connect it to more information. Either way, all English sentences must have a verb. Let’s look at some examples:
| Subject | Verb | |
| The students | study | every day. |
| Subject | Verb | |
| I | write | in class. |
| Subject | Verb | |
| The test questions | are | difficult. |
| Subject | Verb | |
| It | is | important to read. |
Complete Ideas
All written sentences in English must be complete ideas in the sense that they do not leave the reader with any obvious questions. The best way to understand this is to look at some examples.
Example 1
When I finish studying.
The sentence above is not a complete idea because it leaves an obvious question unanswered: “When you finish, studying, then what? What will you do after your finish studying?” Accordingly, we will would need to add to the sentence to make it acceptable. For example, “When I finish studying, I will take a nap.”
Let’s look at an example with “because.” This is the most common type of incomplete sentence that I see in students’ essays.
Example 2
Because it is important to learn English.
This sentence is also not a complete idea because it leaves an obvious question unanswered: “What are you doing because it is important to learn English?” The word “because” (notice how it has the word “cause” in it) signals cause and effect. Therefore, we need to include both a cause and an effect when writing a sentence with “because”. In this case, we have the cause, “it is important to learn English,” but not the effect of this. Accordingly we need to add an effect to complete the sentence: “I am going to college because it is important to learn English.”
What is a fragment?
Now that we have talked about the necessary elements of an English sentence, we can talk about fragments. A fragment is an incomplete sentence. This means that a fragment is a type of grammatically incorrect sentence. A fragment might be missing a subject, a verb, or be an incomplete idea.
Fragments that are Missing a Subject
One type of fragment is missing a subject. Let’s look at one example:
Example 1
Works at the university.
This sentence is a fragment. We have a verb (“is”), but we are missing a subject. We can therefore fix this sentence by adding a subject:
She works at the university.
Now let’s look at another example. This one of the most fragments I see in students’ essays.
Example 2
Is important to study every day.
This sentence is also a fragment because it is missing a subject. In this case, we are missing “it.” We should correct the sentence to:
It is important to study every day.
Dummy Subjects
In the sentence above, “it” is an example of a dummy subject. This type of subject can be the most difficult one to use in English.
What is a dummy subject?
A dummy subject is a subject that doesn’t really mean or refer to anything specific. “It” and “there are the most common dummy subjects. Here are examples:
It is a sunny day.
It is good to see you.
There are clouds in the sky.
There seem to be a lot of questions.
What do “it” and “there” mean in the examples above? They don’t really mean anything! We only use them because we need a subject in all English sentences.
We use the dummy subject, “it” in various situations, like:
- Time (It is 2:00).
- Weather (It is cold).
- Describing a general situation with an adjective (It is nice to meet you; It is important to read; It is good to learn).
It is good to keep in mind that “it” can be hard to hear in spoken English. When people say “it’s,” you might just hear “is”. It gets easier to hear with time. For now, at least, do your best to remember to use “it” when writing.
We typically use “there” to talk about the existence of something. Here are examples:
- There is a class in this room.
- There are books on the shelf.
- There is nothing more that we can do.
Because dummy subjects don’t refer to anything concrete, they are easy to forget. Just remember that if you don’t know what subject to write, it is probably “it” or “there”!
Fragments that are Missing a Verb
There are also fragments that are missing a verb. In my experience, these are less common than fragments without subjects, but they are good to be familiar with. Here is an example:
Example
It important to study.
In the example above, we are missing “is.” It should be “It is important to study.”
Fragments are Incomplete Ideas
A sentence is also considered a fragment if it is not a complete idea. We already saw some examples above. Let’s look at them again.
Example 1
When I finish studying.
Example 2
Because it is important to learn English.
Remember that a sentence should not leave the reader with any obviously unanswered questions. To fix the sentences above, we would need to complete the ideas like so:
- When I finish studying, I will be happy.
- I am studying a lot because it is important to learn English.