| Sentences:
fragments or run-ons
There
is nothing that ruins a writer’s professional image
faster than grammatically-poor sentences. A sentence must
contain a subject and a verb and must express a complete thought.
Examples
The report was written.
I wrote the report.
Both of these examples
contain a subject and a verb and state a complete thought.
A sentence may also include several subjects and/or verbs
and may express more than one thought.
Example
The report analyzes the results, and the recommendations will
be presented to the board. (This is a compound sentence {two
subjects, two verbs and two thoughts}. That is why there is
a comma before the “and.”)
Writers get themselves
into trouble when they ignore the conditions for a sentence.
They may then produce sentence fragments or run-on sentences.
A sentence
fragment is a group of words that lacks a subject and/or verb
or does not express a complete thought.
Original example
As you required.
(There is a subject and a verb but it does not express a complete
thought.)
Correct example
As you required, we revised our estimates.
A run-on
sentence consists of two or more sentences joined without
the appropriate punctuation.
Original example
Computers break down, however, you can call the help desk.
(There are two sentences.)
Revised example
Computers break down. However, you can call the help desk
Can you identify whether the following sentences are fragments,
run-ons or are correct?
1. In
response to your correspondence of March 27 regarding the
funding for your project.
2. We have only two days until the annual meeting I don’t
have the annual report completed and that will take at least
two days to finalize.
3. You edited your document from the computer screen instead
of in print format as a result you did not catch all the errors.
4. Head office wants all managers to be present when the client
arrives next week for our first project management meeting.
5. I saw in the paper last week that Starbrite is going to
move its head office to Winnipeg although it may upset many
employees.
6. Although clarity and conciseness are an important part
of the writing process in business documents, which are sent
to impatient readers.
Answers
1. fragment, 2. run-on, 3. run-on, 4. correct, 5. correct,
6. fragment.
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