If you randomly asked 10 of your friends about their worst memory of high school English, we bet most of them can remember being heavily penalized for sentence fragments. Even worse, most don’t probably recollect what they are and even the best way to fix them. So, what exactly is a sentence fragment? Simply put, sentence fragments are groups of clauses that appear like a sentence but they aren’t. The reason sentence fragments fall short of reaching the true sentence hood threshold is because they lack one of the three critical components of a sentence: a subject, a verb, or an independent clause.
Recent studies suggest that the reason why most people fail to identify minor mistakes such as sentence fragments in their work is because of an incomplete line of thought. In this case, the brain routine tricks the brain into assuming that a particular sentence is complete, while in actual sense it isn’t. After all, we generally assume that a complete sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a punctuation mark. On the contrary, however, a sentence can only be said to be truly complete if it incorporates an independent clause.
Below are a few examples of sentence fragments together with their possible revisions:
1. Made it impossible to move.
Revision: The heavy rains made it impossible to move.
2. Knocked her and left.
Revision: Kim knocked her and left.
3. Makeup and shoes scattered everywhere.
Revision: Makeup and shoes were scattered everywhere.
4. Because it was muddy.
Revision: We canceled the hike because it was muddy.
How to Fix a Sentence Fragment
If you casually try to browse “how to fix my sentence fragment” on Google, you will come across a plethora of solutions and suggestions. Unfortunately, most of them ignore the basic English rules, and they may lead to further mistakes. In this section, we are going to show you the three best ways of how to fix a fused sentence in your work. They include:
Merging the Fragment With the Nearby Sentence
One of the biggest causes of sentence fragments is the writer ending a sentence or sentences too soon. Often, this leads to an incomplete thought either before the mistake itself or in the sentence that follows next. In this case, you easily correct this mistake by merging the fragment with the nearby sentence to create a single, coherent sentence.
Example:
Incorrect: The mum was watching TV. While the baby was playing.
Revised: The mum was watching TV, while the baby was playing.
Complete the Fragment by Adding the Appropriate Subject
Sometimes a fragment is caused by a missing subject in the sentence. If any of your sentences are missing the subject, consider adding it and revising the other parts as deemed fit.
Example:
Incorrect: Playing with the kids.
Revised: Jane was playing with the kids.
Complete the Fragment by Adding the Appropriate Verb
Another major cause of fragments in a sentence is the missing verbs. If you determine that a particular sentence in your work is missing a verb, add it and revise the remaining part of the sentence as needed
Example:
Incorrect: Paul in the park.
Revised: I met Paul in the park.
Never Miss Punctuation Mistakes with Our Complete Sentence or Fragment Checker
Our professional online tool helps you fully identify all manner of technical and structural errors in your work including:
- Identify fragments and run-on sentences: our professional run on checker will come in handy in helping you to easily identify and correct incomplete sentences in your work, as well as independent clauses that aren’t punctuated properly.
- Comma splice detection: on top of helping you fix fragmented sentences online, fragment corrector will crawl through your texts to identify and correct any comma splices. Still, it will also highlight and correct issues in all the compound/complex sentences.
- Verb and subject agreement: interchanging singular words with their plurals is one of the most commonly occurring written down mistakes. But with the help of our software, you can easily check, identify, and correct all the subject-verb disagreements in your texts.
Manual Fragments Fixing Vs Online Fragment Corrector
Recently, there has been a raging debate about whether human editors can be replaced by editing tools. The answer is an equivocal NO. After all, writers need actual human beings to help them tell their stories and improve on their ideas. However, there are some select areas where seeking sentence fragment help online beats the human editors, hands down. They include:
Saves Time
Manually combing through a long manuscript or academic paper to pick minor mistakes can be boring and equally time consuming and boring. With the help of our, however, you can instantly identify and correct all the grammar mistakes in your work. Better yet, you don’t have to type anything as it gives you the correct grammar suggestions.
Saves Money
If you have ever tried hiring a professional editor, you probably know that their services can cost a fortune. However, our sentence fragment checker saves you a lot by correcting most of the commonly occurring grammar mistakes without the need of hiring a professional editor. Better yet, the results are instantaneous, and you don’t have to wait for weeks to get feedback.
Makes Your Work More Presentable
Along with correcting grammatical errors, our software program also helps improve the structure of your sentences. Compounded together, it gives your texts a logical flow making it easy to establish and cement your credibility as an excellent student or author.
How to Fix a Fused Sentence with Our Tool
Repairing sentence fragments using our software is a pretty straightforward process:
- Visit our website.
- Copy your written text from a word processing program and paste it on the tool’s dashboard.
- Next, click on the “Check your Text” button.
- After a few seconds, all the mistakes in your text will be highlighted.
- Click on the errors to apply the suggested corrections.
Avoiding sentence fragments is sometimes difficult, especially if you are editing your work manually. The good news is that you no longer have to worry about handing in poorly written academic work or publishing incoherent articles. Our fragment sentence finder will help you find a variety of faulty grammatical and stylistic elements in your work, as well as generate detailed statistics to help improve your writing in particular areas. It is free, easy to use, and delivers instant results.
Try our free sentence fragment fixer today and dedicate your energy to other more productive pursuits.
