Complete sentences convey complete thoughts. Sentence fragments, unless artfully used, suggest that your thinking is fragmented, because you're only presenting a piece of a complete thought. Most of the time you don't want to convey the impression that your thinking is incomplete.
REMEMBER:
A sentence is a unit that has a subject, a verb, and words to complete the thought. A sentence fragment occurs when you forget one of these parts but still capitalize and punctuate your words as a complete sentence.
For Example:
I adore.
This has a subject and a verb but no words to complete the thought and therefore is a sentence fragment. You can make this fragment into a sentence by completing the thought:
I adore staying up until 4 a.m. writing papers.
Most unacceptable sentence fragments are phrases that belong to the previous sentence. Sometimes writers have trouble catching them because their minds supply the connection that the reader doesn't have. For example:
Genna and Zach worked on their art project. Instead of going to the meeting about overpopulation.
The second "sentence" is a sentence fragment. By itself, it doesn't provide enough information for us to understand the thought. We are left wondering who did what instead of going to the meeting. This phrase should be part of the previous sentence:
Genna and Zach worked on their art project instead of going to the meeting about overpopulation.
What about the following? How would you fix this sentence fragment?
She is still productive. Cornelia Lacey who was active in the Civil Rights Commission.
Fitting this sentence fragment into the previous sentence is more complicated. You'll have to move words around so the sentence and the phrase make sense together:
Cornelia Lacey, who was active in the Civil Rights Commission, is still productive.
TIP: One way to recognize sentence fragments is to learn which words often signal phrases or incomplete thoughts: although, because, especially, even, except, for example, if, including, instead of, so that, since, such as, that, which, who, and when. Not all sentence fragments have such tip-off words, but when you see a sentence beginning with one of these words, you should check to see if it's a complete thought.
