A sentence fragment occurs when a sentence is missing one of the following components: A subject, a verb and or a complete thought. A sentence fragment makes sentences hard to understand because, without a subject, the reader would not know who the sentence is about. Furthermore, if there was no verb then the group of words would be missing something. A sentence fragment does not contain an independent clause.  Writers tend to create sentence fragments for stylistic purposes but it is not grammatically correct. Our brain tends to think all a sentence needs is a bunch of words put together with a capital letter in the beginning and a period,  a question mark or an exclamation point put in the end. To make sure one does not write a sentence fragment, always double check for a subject, a verb and that it forms a complete thought.

 

Example 1- Waiting for your reply.

This sentence is missing its subject, therefore, making it a sentence fragment. Without the presence of a subject, the sentence seems unprofessional and is grammatically incorrect. A better sentence would be “I am waiting for your reply.”

 

Example 2- Nin wanted more stars. No matter what.

“No matter what” is a dependent clause and can’t be a sentence by itself. If we joined the two sentences together and put “No matter what” in the beginning, then the sentence would become a full sentence because “Nin wanted more stars” is an independent clause. The new sentence would be “No matter what, Nin wanted more stars”.

 

Example 3- A great idea!

This sentence has no subject or verb, therefore, it is not a proper sentence. If one wanted to correct this sentence, they would need to add a subject and a verb. The edited sentence would be “Jack had a great idea!”.

 

 

Resources:

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/mistake-of-the-month-sentence-fragments/
https://guidetogrammar.org/grammar/fragments.htm
https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/fragments-and-run-ons/