• By 4-wheel-drive, not to mention your old Buick
• Running down the street
• Which certainly explains the entire problem
• “A personal computer, Dolly Parton, and a Ford Pinto”
• Typical Causes of Fragments
  • The Case of the Missing Subject (or, What the heck are you talking about?)
  • Verbals
  • The Missing Sentence
  • Misquotes
• “Acceptable” Fragments
• Practice Exercise

Visualize a battlefield filled with broken bones, the grisly remnants of once brave and healthy sentences:

1. By 4-wheel-drive, not to mention your old Buick.
2. Running down the street.
3. Which certainly explains the entire problem.
4. “A personal computer, Dolly Parton and a Ford Pinto.”

All the above are sentence fragments, tied with run-ons as the Number One grammar error.

Let us inspect them one by one, stepping gingerly over the crushed participles and bleeding adjectives.

Every sentence must have a subject and a verb; our crippled fragment has neither. The giveaway is that you can’t quite tell what’s going on. So,

That logging road is impassable by 4-wheel-drive, not to mention your old Buick.

There is no subject here, and don’t be fooled by running. In this example, it is not a verb but a verbal, which looks like a verb but as we shall see can’t carry the action of a sentence. Before running was cruelly detached, it probably modified someone, as follows:

The girl [who is] running down the street is late for her tryst.

At last, we have a sentence with a verb (explains), but the subject is missing. Which is a relative pronoun, but the noun it relates to is anyone’s guess.

The fact that the radium rods were left uncovered certainly explains the entire problem.

Fell down, dead.

It really helps the poor reader if you supply a subject. For an example, anything will do:

The albino porcupine wearing stainless steel sunglasses fell down, dead.

Feeling tired, sick, hounded by creditors, and just plain disgruntled.

Once again, there is no subject; there is also no verb, since feeling in this example is a verbal, not a verb. Verbals (participles, gerunds) either stand in for adjectives or adverbs to modify something, or else they stand in for nouns, but they are not capable of carrying the action of a sentence. All we need is a subject (our porcupine will serve) and an auxiliary verb:

The albino porcupine with the stainless steel sunglasses was feeling tired, sick, hounded by creditors, and just plain disgruntled.

Feeling tired, sick, hounded by creditors, and just plain disgruntled, I reached my limit.

Or,

I reached my limit. I was feeling tired, sick, hounded by creditors, and just plain disgruntled.

For example, the ridiculous payment to the black crewmen in the form of brass wire, which is of no use to them.

This underlined part of this fragment lacks a verb. (The is is a verb, but it belongs to the dependent clause, which is of no use to them, which is busy modifying the noun wire). The fragment is incomprehensible unless you get help from the previous sentence, which in the student’s original essay read like this:

In Heart of Darkness no attempt is made by the exploiting Europeans to take the natives’ lifestyle into consideration. For example, the ridiculous payment to the black crewmen in the form of brass wire, which is of no use to them.

The fragment is corrected below by adding both a verb and an explanatory phrase:

An example of the thoughtless European attitude is the ridiculous payment to the black crewmen in the form of brass wire, which is of no use to them.

Or, if you prefer:

For example, the ridiculous payment to the black crewmen in the form of brass wire, which is of no use to them, demonstrates the thoughtless European attitude.

We should show you one more, the all-time destroyer of grammatical sentences, the fearsome being error:

Being the shy and retiring type.

There is no subject and being is a verbal, not a verb.

Let’s put in a subject (I), a verb (kissed), and let being act as a verbal modifying the subject:

Being the shy and retiring type, I only kissed Lily Tomlin once on our first date.

Students often create fragments by dutifully amassing quotes to back up their arguments:

The Miller shows clearly that Alison was a comely wench: “She was a pretty creature, fair and tender … — weasel’s body, softly slender … black as sloes … — more truly blissful sight to see she was than blossom on a cherry-tree. … lecherous eye.”

Those are good supporting quotations, but a little confusing. The passage has to be transformed into grammatical sentences:

The Miller shows clearly that Alison was a comely wench: “She was a pretty creature, fair and tender.” She had a “lecherous eye,” eyebrows “black as sloes,” and a “weasel’s body, softly slender.” A “more blissful sight to see she was than blossom on a cherry-tree.”

Is the following a fragment?

Get lost.

No, because there is a verb (get), and the subject of an order or command is understood to be you.

We should admit, besides, that fragments are so prevalent in modern writing that grammar textbooks are reduced to distinguishing between “acceptable” and “unacceptable” fragments. There are a few fragments, for example, in this very document. There are also fragments in literature; for example, note the missing verb in the first line of Alice Munro’s Who Do You Think You Are?:

Royal Beating.

The second edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage, refers to fragments as “verbless sentences,” and leaves the entire matter to taste:

Since the verbless sentence is freely employed by some good writers (as well as extravagantly by many less good ones) it must be classed as modern English usage. That grammarians may deny it the right to be called a sentence has nothing to do with its merits. It must be judged by its success in affecting the reader in the way the writer intended. Used sparingly and with discrimination, the device can no doubt be an effective medium of emphasis, intimacy, and rhetoric. Overdone, as it is in the sprightlier sort of modern journalism, it gets on a reader’s nerves ... (New York: Oxford, 1965, pages 675–676)

The key, as in all matters grammatical, is coherence. Although we ask you to produce technically correct sentences for the purposes of this course, fragments are at times entirely coherent,’ as in this exchange between a mother and the sprightlier sort of ten-year-old baseball fan:

“Where did you go?”
“Out.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing much.”

“Was that cranky Mr. Henderson I heard yelling?”
“Yep.”
“What will it cost me?”
“Just $10 for the windowpane.”

Find the fragments and transform them into healthy sentences. You might have to be inventive. Answers and explanations follow.

1. Not for all the tea in China. Answer
2. Isaac Babel in “The Sin of Jesus” makes fir trees into people. “Turned into a priest ... bent its knees in silent worship.” Answer
3. In “Hills Like White Elephants” and “The Egg,” the male-female relationships lack compassion and tact. Thus creating an environment that is restrictive and almost cruel. Answer
4. People in both stories do have freedom of choice to determine their partners but, once involved, they tend to become trapped. Especially if the relationship does not permit the partner a sense of personal freedom. Answer
5. In Heart of Darkness, King Leopold’s alleged concept of imperialism is vastly different from what actually happened in the Congo. The same in the movie. Answer
6. Montero’s designed to give new freedom to your imagination. Patiently crafted with all the power of 2.6 litres, the independence of both 2- or 4-wheel drive and plenty of room for all your cargo. Even if all you’re carrying is an impulsive imagination. (This excerpt is from a Mitsubishi truck ad in the November, 1986, Road and Track.) Answer

Notes
Remember that if your problem is sentence fragments, it is not essential to distinguish between types of verbals, but you do need to know the difference between a verbal and a verb.