WHAT DOES FRAGMENTS IN SENTENCE MEAN HOW TO
WHAT DOES FRAGMENTS IN SENTENCE MEAN FULL

Instead of telling us that Katniss is panicking, Collins shows us through sentence fragments. Hadn’t I done everything? Taken the tesserae, refused to let her do the same? One slip. Prim was one slip of paper in thousands! Her chances of being chosen so remote that I’d not even bothered to worry about her. Here’s an example from Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games: This technique works very well in first-person and close third-person narratives where the story is intimately linked with the protagonist’s perspective. Sentence fragments can imitate thought patterns and make the readers feel like they’re right in the character’s mind. We don’t always think in neat, complete sentences. Our thoughts tend to be a loose array of flowing images and ideas. Emulating Realistic Thought Patterns,Ĭonveying Disjointedness, and Increasing Pacing Natural-sounding dialogue, especially for a casual conversation. Sentence fragments can be an important element of “I’m sorry,” he said.įeels much more forced. Here’s what the dialogue would look like if you “fixed” the fragments:Ĭolin slowed as he approached a stop sign and then looked at her. In fact, the sentence fragments make the dialogue feel natural, like two real teenagers are actually talking. The context keeps the meaning of every sentence clear.

WHAT DOES FRAGMENTS IN SENTENCE MEAN FULL

“Sorry,” he said.Ĭolin brought the car to a full stop twenty feet in front of the stop sign and said, “Are you sure?”Įven though there are four sentence fragments in these five lines of dialogue, the reader is never lost. Take a look at this example from John Green’s novel An Abundance of Katherines:Ĭolin slowed as he approached a stop sign and then looked at her. It allows us to skip repeating information that’s already been established. In spoken language, we use sentence fragments all the time as a communication shortcut. The best way to make written dialogue feel like spoken language is to use a couple speech characteristics while still keeping the sentences clear and direct. Even if it’s easy to listen to conversations, the direct transcriptions are usually hard to read. Words, grammatical errors, and abandoned sentence fragments. Transcribe spoken dialogue word-for-word, you’ll discover a plethora of filler If you’re friend’s confused, you’ll need to do some tweaking. When you’re unsure, ask a friend to read the paragraph with the fragment. An intentional sentence fragment does not work when it leaves your audience confused. The one caveat with fragments is that the intended meaning always needs to be clear. But used carefully in creative contexts, sentence fragments can create some wonderful artistic effects. In formal contexts, sentence fragments are straight up inappropriate.

These actions don’t require an acted-upon object to make sense, so they’re not considered fragments. For example, the rose blossomed, then it died. Note though that some actions (predicates) don’t require an object to be a complete idea.

Unless you’re writing something extremely experimental, your artistic goal shouldn’t be irritated confusion. Without a clear context, sentence fragments will make your reader confused and irritated. Fix: After the performance ended, I slipped silently out of the hall.Fix: I stopped at the intersection, wondering where to go next.Fix: I brought my umbrella because it was raining.Fix: She recommended that I join the book club.Fix: The blacksmith discarded the remaining pieces.Fix: Our mission went better than expected.Take a look at these examples to see what I mean: This “error” is called aĪs you might expect, most sentence fragments are confusing because they’re missing information. Predicate, or complement, it’s considered incomplete. If a sentence is missing a necessary subject, In grammar and linguistics classes, the first thing you learn is that every sentence has an actor (the subject), an action (the predicate), and the acted-upon object (the complement). On the chopping block this week: sentence fragments.

WHAT DOES FRAGMENTS IN SENTENCE MEAN HOW TO

Welcome to my first post in How to Break Grammar Rules in Fiction, my regular segment that explains why grammar rules exist so you can know how to break them like an artist.

Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.

What does fragments in sentence mean