Glossary
sentence fragment
A sentence fragment is a group of words punctuated as a sentence that lacks a subject, a verb or a complete thought.
A sentence fragment is a piece of a sentence written as if it were whole: it has a capital letter and a full stop but no subject, no verb, or no complete thought. Because the dressing was dry. has a subject and a verb yet cannot stand, because because leaves the result unsaid — that is a dependent-clause fragment. The patient in bed four. has no verb. Ran to the desk. has no subject. A fragment usually appears next to the sentence it belongs to, which makes the repair obvious: attach it to that sentence, or add the missing piece so it can stand alone. Formal writing also uses intentional fragments for effect, and those are not errors — the test is whether the fragment can be read as a complete statement in its context, and whether the exam has offered a complete version among the choices. When two answers fix the sentence, the one leaving no fragment is the answer.
Taught in
Related terms
- clause — A clause is a group of words with its own subject and verb; an independent clause can stand as a sentence, a dependent one cannot.
- run-on sentence — A run-on sentence joins two independent clauses with no punctuation at all, while a comma splice joins them with only a comma.
- comma splice — A comma splice joins two independent clauses with only a comma; a comma is not strong enough to hold two sentences together, so one of four repairs is needed.
Source: The grammar guide in this course, whose conventions follow the US Government Publishing Office's Style Manual for standard written American English, with standard grammar references for agreement, case, tense and sentence structure. The GPO manual is US federal government material, not subject to copyright in the United States. Every definition and example above was written for this course; no reference text is reproduced. (GPO Style Manual accessed 2026-10-27; definitions written 2026-10-27)