{"id":7967,"date":"2021-02-18T16:17:53","date_gmt":"2021-02-18T21:17:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/?p=7967"},"modified":"2021-02-18T16:17:53","modified_gmt":"2021-02-18T21:17:53","slug":"the-incomplete-sentence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/the-incomplete-sentence\/","title":{"rendered":"The Incomplete Sentence"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_7968\" style=\"width: 1034px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone post-item__attachment\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7968\" class=\"size-large wp-image-7968\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2021\/02\/Incomplete-1024x682.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2021\/02\/Incomplete-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2021\/02\/Incomplete-350x233.jpg 350w, https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2021\/02\/Incomplete-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2021\/02\/Incomplete.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-7968\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image by \u2764\ufe0f Remains Healthy \u2764\ufe0f from Pixabay, CCO<\/p><\/div>\n<p>An <strong>incomplete sentence<\/strong>, or <strong>sentence fragment<\/strong>, is an incomplete thought. There is some vital piece of information missing. Usually, what\u2019s missing is either a verb or a noun. This is elementary English and should be easy to identify. We know an incomplete sentence when we see one. Or, do we? When does a sentence fragment look like a complete sentence?<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s consider these two fragments:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Brother on the beach.<\/li>\n<li>Cute kitten.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What about the brother on the beach? Whose brother is it and what is he doing on the beach? We need to know more. <strong>Her<\/strong> brother <strong>is<\/strong> on the beach. <u>Her<\/u> is a <strong>pronoun<\/strong>, <u>brother<\/u> is the <strong>subject<\/strong>, <u>is on<\/u> serves as a <strong>verbal phrase<\/strong>. It\u2019s obvious that this is a sentence fragment, right?<\/p>\n<p>If this sentence were in the form of spoken dialogue, you could assume that some pronoun (my, your, his, her, our, their) was <strong>implied<\/strong>, but you would still need to add that verbal phrase, <u>is on<\/u>, in order to create a complete sentence. \u201cBrother\u2019s on the beach.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, as for the cute kitten, let\u2019s return to the idea of spoken dialogue. In English, we often speak in incomplete sentences because an unspoken word or two can be implied. If you were holding a kitten and I walked up, you would understand me if I said, \u201cCute kitten.\u201d It is the equivalent of saying, \u201cThat\u2019s a cute kitten.\u201d <u>That\u2019s<\/u> is a <strong>conjunction<\/strong> of the pronoun <u>that<\/u> and the verb <u>is<\/u>. However, in written English, Cute kitten is a fragment of a sentence.<\/p>\n<p>Consider this exchange:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy are you so sad?\u201d \u201cBecause my friend is moving away.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause my friend is moving away\u201d is a <strong>dependent clause<\/strong>. It contains a noun and a verb, but it is still an incomplete sentence. They are typically found in spoken English, particularly because spoken English is so informal. You can identify dependent clauses by the <strong>dependent marker word<\/strong>, almost always found at the beginning of the dependent clause.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/english-words-and-phrases-of-transition\/\">Last week<\/a>, we talked about words of transition. Dependent markers are common transitions. Because, whenever, although, after, before, until, whatever, unless\u2026<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cWhat time do you usually go to bed?\u201d \u201cAfter 10 PM.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cI want to watch a movie tonight.\u201d \u201cWhatever makes you happy.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When writing English, though, you need to use <strong>independent clauses<\/strong>. An independent clause contains a subject, a verb, and a complete thought.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cI usually go to bed after 10 PM.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>\u201cI will watch whatever makes you happy.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Remember to avoid using dependent clauses when writing English unless you are writing dialogue, as in a short story, for example.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<img width=\"350\" height=\"233\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2021\/02\/Incomplete-350x233.jpg\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2021\/02\/Incomplete-350x233.jpg 350w, https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2021\/02\/Incomplete-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2021\/02\/Incomplete-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2021\/02\/Incomplete.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><p>An incomplete sentence, or sentence fragment, is an incomplete thought. There is some vital piece of information missing. Usually, what\u2019s missing is either a verb or a noun. This is elementary English and should be easy to identify. We know an incomplete sentence when we see one. Or, do we? When does a sentence fragment&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/the-incomplete-sentence\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":7968,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[134956,135139],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-7967","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english-grammar","category-english-language","tag-grammar"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7967"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7970,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7967\/revisions\/7970"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}