Punctuation: A Crash Course

Many of us have heard that it's important to avoid sentence fragments in academic writing. How do you identify a fragment? 

All complete sentences contain two parts:

• The subject: Who is doing the action
• The predicate: The action that's being done

A sentence fragment is missing either the subject or the predicate (or both!).

Examples: 

• Fragment: Painted Starry Night. ✗
• Fragment: Van Gogh painting. ✗
• Fragment: In 1889. ✗
• Complete sentence: In 1889, Van Gogh painted Starry Night. ✔

Some sentence fragments may seem to have a subject and a predicate, but they're actually dependent clauses, which can't stand alone. 

Examples:

• Fragment: After he painted Starry Night. ✗
• Complete sentence: After he painted Starry Night, Van Gogh moved to Auvers-sur-Oise. ✔

You can fix a fragment in different ways depending on what the fragment is missing. 

• Fragment missing who did the action (the subject): Add the subject (usually a noun or pronoun).

Painted in 1889. ✗

Van Gogh painted Starry Night in 1889. ✔

He painted Starry Night in 1889. ✔

• Fragment missing the action that was done (the predicate): Add a verb.

The whole story. ✗

The whole story began in 1889. ✔

• Fragment consisting of only a dependent clause: Add an independent clause or rewrite the dependent clause so it stands on its own.

Although Van Gogh's painting career was brief. ✗

Although Van Gogh's painting career was brief, his work remains influential today. ✔

Van Gogh's painting career was brief. ✔

Watch this video for more information about how to identify sentence fragments: