Conventions of Composition Rule 130
Rule: A complete sentence has at least one independent clause and expresses a complete thought. A sentence fragment either doesn’t have a subject or a predicate OR it has a subject and predicate, but it also has a subordinating element that makes the thought incomplete.
Note: Two complete thoughts may not be strung together without any mark of punctuation or conjunction. This error is called a run on sentence. Two complete thoughts joined by a comma creates an error called a comma splice. To correct a run on or comma splice, you may
- subordinate one of the sentences;
- coordinate the sentences by separating with a comma and conjunction (see rule 1);
- separate with a semicolon (see rule 2); or
- create two sentences.
Examples:
Wrong: A happy man with seventeen children who love and respect him.
Better: A happy man with seventeen children who love and respect him needs to behave well.
Also better: I met a happy man with seventeen children who love and respect him.
Wrong: Wondering why grammar has to be so much fun for the rest of the class.
Better: I spent my time wondering why grammar has to be so much fun for the rest of the class.
Fragment: Whenever we go shopping at the huge mall in Minnesota.
Better: Whenever we go shopping at the huge mall in Minnesota, we get lost.
Practice turning the following into complete sentences:
- Peyton and Cloudy, two cute felines on campus.
- We want to go to the under-the-lights game across town, we have already painted our faces blue.
- As soon as the Blackhawks win another Stanley Cup.
Resources for further clarification of complete sentences, fragments, run ons, and comma splices:
Libweb's What is a Complete Sentence?
Purdue OWL's Comma Splices