Sentence fragment angst

In previous post, I typed this:
I know, picky picky, but I like to be precise. Especially when emailing Theresa, who will notice if I'm not!

But then, remembering that I should model good behavior (yes, yes, that's what I try to do, and stop laughing), I changed it to:

I know, picky picky, but I like to be precise, especially when emailing Theresa, who will notice if I'm not! 

This inner debate (which went on for a while: "But I like the emphasis!" "But what if they think I approve of sentence fragments in general?") made me consider why we go with fragments, and whether we need to have some self-guidelines (NOT rules) or consider each on a case-by-case basis, or just go with what feels right, or....

It's been a really trying morning, debating all this. It's like seeing a teenaged girl in a revealing outfit. "That makes her look like she's just a sexual object!" "Well, you know, she should flaunt it while she has it. Another decade, no one is going to want her belly button showing." Expression or accuracy????

And how much does accuracy matter in an informal setting?

But I was considering what would be a "right" sentence fragment. Are there circumstances and considerations that -- should the sentence come out fragmented, you'd hesitate and then decide to keep it?

Help here-- How about looking at your recent writing and come up with examples of where you went with a fragment, and maybe some where you decided to incorporate the fragment into a sentence or add the words needed to make it a sentence?
Alicia
 trying to come up with Grand Unified Theory of Sentence Fragments

Fragments redux

Coming from comments on the last post:

Deb:
Fragments make sense in deep POV, but I've read that editors will 'repair' them, killing the voice. Is that still true?


Deb, thanks for letting me talk about one of my favorite subjects! I could go on and on and on....
(I can just imagine the other commenters:
"Deb, did you HAVE to mention fragments? You know she's going to rant--"
"That's what Deb wants! She thinks it's funny to poke that stick at Alicia and run away."
"She knows that Alicia has final grades to get filed, and she thinks it's fun to distract her!"
"Deb is pretty smart."
"As long as we don't actually have to read this long rant -- oh, and she's going to do another one!-- about fragments.")

SOMETIMES fragments work -- not in deep POV specifically, but when you are narrating using the character voice (kind of first-person but with the third-person pronoun). Surely not all character voices are full of fragments. I mean, if I'm deep in the POV and voice of an erudite British Oxford don, fragments probably don't make sense-- this guy probably was speaking in full grammatical paragraphs at age 3. Deep POV isn't a set of rules (like "use lots of fragments" :) but a writer's approach to presenting the character, and when you commit to that, you commit to presenting -this- character, and that can mean using this character's voice (that's actually a further choice-- most deep POV narrations these days will be in the character's voice, but that's a rather recent trend, and some authors-- Koontz comes to mind-- can do deep POV and still be mostly in their own authorial voice. Maybe we should discuss that later).

And so does this character exist-- not just think-- in fragments? Deep POV and character voice are not simply "in the mind and thoughts." Deep POV is NOT stream-of-consciousness. I wrote a post on stream of consciousness, which was an important literary trend in the start of the 20th Century. Often when writers today talk about deep POV, they act like they mean stream-of-consciousness (which is being in the MIND at this MOMENT of the character, while -- in my definition-- deep POV is being in the character, who is more than just his mind). If you read Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake and the other famous s-o-c books, you'll see the danger of replicating the inner workings of the mind-- often it's just about unreadable.

Very, very few books actually get in there and report the inner thoughts as they happen. (Most of us don't even think primarily in words anyway-- we think in memory blasts and images and associations as much as we think in words. So even trying to convey thoughts in words is modifying these to make them readable.) That's partly because actual thought -- even in words-- is unreadable: illogical, dissociative, and spastic. But it's also because that sort of narration can be boring and unfocused on what the reader is reading for, which is probably not those flashes of memory occasioned by the sight of snow, but, you know, the story.

In fact, in deep POV, we are NOT replicating the inner workings of the mind. We are instead trying to create an experience FOR THE READER (the reader is all-important) of being this character, and this character is more than his mind, and what counts is not exact replication but how you go to create the experience for the reader.

And the first rule is: Don't narrate in ways that make the reader stop reading, because she can't be this character if she can't bear to read the scene. :)

Now obviously different readers have different reasons to stop reading. I get bored with a lot of "world-building," where other readers love that. But keep in mind that most readers are comfortable with a certain degree of syntactical conventionality that is useful when conveying the scene in written language. We do expect capital letters at the start of sentences, and quote marks around dialogue (though we can adapt-- there are some books without one or the other of those that even I, hidebound pragmatist that I am, have got through).

So we might always think about the concessions we're already making to the conventions of written language. Most of us don't think putting a capital letter at the start of a sentence interferes with our "voice", right? And once we start accepting that some conventions just make it easier for the reader to get into our story (because they're not being distracted by relatively meaningless departures from convention), we can start evaluating which breaks from convention are helpful when in creating the right experience for the reader.

(And one way, btw, to seduce readers into accepting your syntactical innovations is to ease them into it, maybe have the start of the book fairly conventional, and add in innovations where they work most effectively. For example, deep POV is often more effective in high-emotion and high-action moments, but not necessarily so helpful in conveying information about the setting or situation, which is why often we do that at the beginning of the scene in a somewhat more distant POV. So we should realize that deciding to do a book in deep POV doesn't mean that we always need to be in deep POV at every moment-- rather when it deepens the reader's experience.)

So onto fragments, and it's interesting how often this comes up. Some fragments are "voice," "character." Some are just the writer being lazy or defiant, frankly. Sometimes the editor can tell which fragments add to the story and the voice, and which just annoy... but do you want the editor having to make that decision? Especially as many editors will fix all of them? (House style, remember, is going to trump "voice" every time. Sorry. But reality trumps desire on this blog, at least once in a while. :)

The best way to make sure that the character's voice is kept in there is NOT to overuse the more annoying,I mean innovative, aspects of voice. Use fragments when they count, not all the time. If we're judicious about when some break with convention really does add to the reader's experience, we're far more likely to slip it by the editor-- I mean, the editor is more likely to read this as a moment where the character is particularly emotional or in tune or whatever. The editor might not let it go if the narration always fragments sentences, if there are fragments regardless of which character is in viewpoint, if there is no distinction in sentence construction between highly emotional moments and more thoughtful moments. Sin judiciously, and you're more likely to get away with it. :) Okay, let's put that another way. If you construct sentences and paragraphs in ways that add to the reader's experience, that make the experience exciting, deep, whatever that passage calls for, then the editor might go with it and allow it.

(Again, this is not necessarily entirely a choice the editor gets to make... and the copy editor might have some control here too. So keep that in mind -- that's the price of having your work pass through two or three editors as is customary and usually helpful in so many publishing houses. If you don't want that, well, there are places to publish that don't have editing.)

Now there is character voice, which is often related to deep POV but not the same thing. After all, first-person narration is definitely "character voice," but might or might not be very deep POV. In fact, a lot of first-person narrations are deliberately deceptive, which might mean keeping the reader OUT of the narrator's mind.

So what if your character's voice is all fragmentary? Hmm. Well, the tradeoff for the authenticity might be unreadability. If you don't want that trade, I'd certainly think of being in a more restrained (authorial) voice and/or a less deep level of POV for most of the book, and only in the fragmentary POV/voice when I want to give some sense of what he sounds like or what his mind is like. Just because he has a unique voice doesn't mean that's the best voice to use in narrating everywhere. I'm thinking of the lovely book Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale, which actually has a hero who thinks fragmentarily (he's had a stroke). Kinsale has a few passages (very emotional moments) in that voice, but most of the book is in the heroine's voice or a restrained and eloquent author voice (Kinsale has a wonderful voice).

Not to say that a book can't explore the unusual voice. But if the book isn't ABOUT that voice (as Ulysses really was about the narrative/voice experimentation), does the whole story benefit from being told in that voice?

Back to fragments--
A fragment is really just another type of sentence-- an incomplete one. And just like any sentence form, a fragment will work in some situations (and some constructions) but not others. If you have a good editor who is sensitive to this, yes, she's probably going to take the ones that don't work (and with many writers, that's most of the fragments, because most of their sentences are incomplete). That might or might not "kill the voice".

There isn't some blanket allowance-- "Fragments are allowed in this book!" or "Fragments are part of my voice!" Fragments in and of themselves don't work anymore than rolling through a four-way stop on the road works. They work when they work-- when they're right for this moment and this passage and this character and this moment. My saying, "Sometimes a fragment works," doesn't mean always. Sometimes, say at 2 am, on a deserted road, when there are no cars anywhere around and most important no police cars, it works to roll through that four-way stop. That doesn't mean that every four-way stop sign can be ignored if we feel brazen today. :)


Too many writers use deep POV as an excuse to fragment too many sentences. There is still the need to communicate to the reader in a language and syntax the reader can understand (this is why the French character thinks in English :). That should be "easily understand" if you are not meaning to write the more narratively and syntactically complex innovations of the more extreme literary fiction. Do you want the reader to have to study your passages to discern the meaning? Then that's the more narratively and syntactically complex, etc., and I'm not talking about that sort of fiction. I'm talking about fiction that is meant to tell a story about these characters, which is what most of us write.

Also, some types of fragments are easier to "hear" than others. The ones that are actual fragments-- that is, fragmentary elements, incompleted thoughts, bits of information-- do in fact convey that bittiness that gives a particular staccato feel to the narration. What doesn't usually work for me is when the writer just breaks off part of a sentence, like this:
He headed for the door. Which was closed.

Now there can be some reason to break that off. But more often, there just isn't. The writer just adds that afterthought, and there's really no meaning reason to keep it separate from its sentence. (Really, most of the fragments I see in submission are like that, and I think that sort of fragment gives them all a bad rep. :) If you can join the fragment to an adjacent sentence without altering the meaning, why not do that?

And "sentence and paragraph construction" is key here. Fragments are a part of a whole, not just apart from that whole. They might not be part of a sentence, but they are part of a paragraph. They only work if they work in that paragraph or in the larger passage. The question is-- why is this thought or info presented in a fragment? What is the reason for the incompleteness? That's important. That's essential, in fact.

For example, let's say I'm writing a passage where the character is describing the setting of her 10th year high school reunion and how it makes her feel. A lot of fragments-- bits of this and bits of that-- can work, if the character is feeling fragmented, if she can't focus, if she's distracted by something else.
Back again. The high school gym. The strobe light flashing intermittently, illuminating her old classmates, the ones who bothered to come, and hurting her eyes. The streamers from the last prom and the smell of basketball-team sweat. And Johnny, still mysterious, still elusive, standing in the shadows near the exit. The silver-foil sign-- "Welcome Class of '99!" -- the message missing the comma. The timorous teen band in the corner, laboring away at old N'Sync hits.

But there should be a reason for the bittiness, like the presence of her high-school boyfriend distracting her. And I notice that even with that, I'm selecting and revising. Here are my revision thoughts, dictated by my left brain right this moment:
Johnny ought to be at the end of the paragraph, not in the middle. I like the sweat thing, but the rest of the paragraph is mostly visual (N'Sync isn't, maybe put those together, before the strobe light?), so I might find some visual bit to replace it. I don't like all those participles in that third sentence, so I might use "flashed" instead of "flashing," thereby making this a sentence. :) I'd worry also about the sign because the punctuation isn't exactly right (needs a comma before "message", but that doesn't work with the dash... must find a way to fix that because it will always bother me). The "old N'Sync hits" is summary, not this very moment-- they'd be playing only one song this moment. So Google and find an old N'Sync song they're playing right now. Be in the moment. What's happening right this moment, not the whole evening? Also, I might start with "She was back again" or "Tracy was back again," just because that feels better. Anyone can be back again. And without a subject, the reader might think I mean "the high school gym is back again," and that's not what I mean. SHE is back again. In the high... (should I have "In the high school gym?" I don't know. That sounds sort of clunky and directive). Okay, you know, I really want to be all fragmenty and flirty, but the truth is, I think that opening should be "She was back again in the high school gym." In fact, you know, if I'm in deep POV, would I think "the high school?" What do I think when I think of my old high school? I actually think "BHS," don't I? I mean, "the high school" could refer to any high school, but the school she went to isn't any high school. It's very specific. So how about "She was back again in the BHS gym"?

(Yes, my left brain thinks in parentheticals and emoticons.)

So, point is, my immediate drafting voice might start out with all fragments, but my revising voice starts knitting things together, shaping the passage (most important thing last), connecting thoughts, all that. That's actually ME, not the character. The character might not care all that much about having the sensory detail presented coherently (visual first with the strobe light illumination), but I do, because I think the reader likes the more logical presentation, so she can assemble it into a coherent picture.

But I would still end up with some fragments in there. And I'd keep them because they added to the paragraph somehow, not because they're fragments and because the first time I drafted this they were there, and therefore they're my "voice". Actually, my voice is more in the revising than the drafting-- even if I get it right in the drafting, I will know that because I try to revise it and can't make it better.

So-- long post, as per usual. But if there's anything to come out of this, it's -- fragments are part of an entire whole-- the paragraph, the passage, the scene. Does this particular fragment add something to this paragraph? Does -being a fragment-- add to the meaning? There's nothing inherently cool about fragments. If this one works, it works. But it works because it works, not because it's a fragment. So if I say, "Fragments are okay," I don't mean every fragment is fine by nature. Think of it rather as another type of sentence. All forms of sentences are okay... in some situations. Is this right for this situation? There's no blanket endorsement here. It's all about the context. (And to some degree, it's about the writer's skill-- some can pull off stunts I wouldn't want lesser writers to try at home. :)

Alicia

Sentence fragments redux

Really, I have no problem with the well-placed and effective and infrequent sentence fragment. But as with every grammar exception, I think, it should be the exception, not the rule. The fragment should be used for emphasis of some kind, not as just another variety of sentence. So when I revise or edit, I often re-hook a fragment to the thought-sentence adjacent, or if the fragment is really its own thought, make it into a full sentence. The occasional fragments which add emphasis or punctuation or voice-verisimilitude will have far more effect when they stand out as unusual.

This comes to mind because I'm reading a very good book with very many unnecessary fragments-- an average of one per paragraph. It's non-fiction, so the fragments do not reflect the voice of a mentally unstable or uneducated or broken-spirited character. And the author is an experienced writer, and the publisher a major one (the majorest, prob), and the subject is Shakespeare, so the incessant fragmentation does not fit the situation either. In fact, as generously as I'm reading, I cannot find any reason for a fragment-per-paragraph.

Anyway, this is a good book. In fact, I'm going to get a couple extra copies to give to friends. However, all these fragments have driven me to stop reading and write a blog post.) (Probably the author was not aiming for this result. :)

So here are some examples from a terrific chapter about the issues raised by the variation of endings of Lear between the Quarto and the Folio. (Really, this is fascinating.) But to the fragments, away!

Or do they represent different stages in the evolution of Shakespeare as an artist and thus different versions that are both, in a way, Shakespearian? If it was he who made the change.

Note the assumption by Shapiro that Shakespeare himself would have seen things Shapiro's way: that his original draft was "incoherent" and that he had to make a choice between "the integrity of his character and his plot". That Shakespeare preferred conventional revenge-plot simplification to anything too "dark and existential."

"She's dead as earth," he says in both versions as he sets her body down and calls out for a mirror. One he can hold up to his daughter's lips in a desperate effort to see, "If that her breath will mist or stain the stone/Why then she lives."

Here's a sentence fragment leading to a sentence fragment-- and across a different paragraph than the original sentence whose thought they together complete (that is, they belong in the same paragraph, I think):

*long but coherent sentence, ending with:
...and one of them (the conversations) has remained in my mind.
(New paragraph) Remained because it had an important effect on my thinking back then, and because of the way it can historicize, let's say, the fascinationg trajectory of Greenblatt's own thinking. His thinking about Shakespeare as an author.

Now when I try to plumb the author's intent as he tries to plumb Shakespeare's (and I think neither of us thinks that "author intent" should be controlling, yet here we are), I figure that he wanted to avoid making his sentences too long. But I don't think that's a good reason for fragments. First, in the case of a too-long sentence, the solution is making another sentence, not a fragment. Second, this is an academic book, and long sentences are not verboten in academic prose, goodness knows. Third, the sentences intact would have been long but coherent, as they start with the main clause (almost always the simplest construction for a long sentence, and one that can clarify almost any addition of modifying clauses and phrases).

So that last one -- there's no reason "remained" has to be a fragment. Let's make it a real sentence:
..and one of them (the conversations) has remained in my mind.
(New paragraph) This remained because it had an important effect on my thinking back then, and because of the way it can historicize, let's say, the fascinationg trajectory of Greenblatt's own thinking. His thinking about Shakespeare as an author.

Don't like the repetition? Neither do I. Here's what I'd actually do (also obliterating the dumb repetition of "his thinking" and the split of a thought into two paragraphs).

...One conversation has remained in my mind ever since because it had an important effect on my thinking back then, and because it can historicize, let's say, the fascinationg trajectory of Greenblatt's own thinking about Shakespeare as an author.
(Then I'd start a new paragraph for his discussion of the situation of the conversation and another about the specifics.)

It's a long sentence, and it can be broken up if necessary. (I might break between the "me" effects and the "him" effects-- "And it can historicize..." Yes, you can start a sentence with "and". The "because" is okay in the long sentence, but here it would cause a fragment (And because it can historicize, let's say, the fascinationg trajectory of Greenblatt's own thinking about Shakespeare as an author.FRAGMENT!) "And" is a coordinating conjunction and works with independent clauses (independent clauses can be complete sentences on their own), so "and" wouldn't make that a fragment. But "because" is a subordinating conjunction and creates a dependent clause, and dependent clauses must be hooked to an independent clause to form a full sentence. (I will post again my Clauses schemata if anyone asks.)

The "his thinking" -- I really don't get the author's thinking on this one. This is just an explanation of what thinking he's talking about in the sentence, so why not put it in the sentence?

Here's another where the repetition is unnecessary, and so is the fragmentation:

"She's dead as earth," he says in both versions as he sets her body down and calls out for a mirror to hold up to his daughter's lips in a desperate effort to see, "If that her breath will mist or stain the stone/Why then she lives."

Too long a sentence? Okay, but don't break it at the mirror. (Break, mirror-- I'm so clever. :) Break it between the speech and the action:
"She's dead as earth," he says in both versions. Then he sets her body down and calls out for a mirror to hold up to his daughter's lips in a desperate effort to see, "If that her breath will mist or stain the stone/Why then she lives."

That way each sentence has a coherent and complete thought-- Here is what he says. Here is what he does.

Now as I said, this is a GOOD book. So please don't let this make you not want to buy the book. It's good enough that I'm almost able to ignore the fragments. Almost. (See? I can do fragments!)

Let's look at the others, and I'll say how I'd edit them, were I editing this for Super Major Publisher.

Or do they represent different stages in the evolution of Shakespeare as an artist and thus different versions that are both, in a way, Shakespearian? If it was he who made the change.

This I understand. The fragment IS a conclusion, a caveat, and should be emphasized. However, I think a dash would be more emphatic, as it adds the note of interruption, of undermining. Let's see:
Or do they represent different stages in the evolution of Shakespeare as an artist and thus different versions that are both, in a way, Shakespearian-- if it was he who made the change.

Can't you almost hear the portentous pause there, the slight cackle before the subversive suggestion that this might not be Shakespeare's change at all? (He makes it clear that this IS subversive, even dangerous. :) Yes, there's the problem of the missing question mark, but I like the flatness imposed on the whole sentence by adding that caveat, so I'd want the question mark gone anyway. The "if" is sort of a superior question, overwhelming and undermining the first.

The trouble with a too-easy resort to fragments is that that can keep the author from trying out other constructions that might accomplish more than simple fragmentation. The dash both connects and divides, and that's a terrific effect, and, I think, just right for this thought. If the author has an instinctive "try again" whenever he considered a fragment, he might have found another, more effective construction. Just sayin'. (That's not truly a fragment, btw, though I would like it to be so I come across as more wild and free. It's really an elliptical sentence, as the subject "I" and the auxiliary "am" are implied. But I think that implication makes for a fragment. I mean, most fragments have implied sentence elements missing.)

Finally, here's a paragraph where I think fragmentation works, but I'd actually ADD a sentence fragment, so that-- well, I don't know. It just seems like two fragments makes for a better rhythm. Let's see:
Note the assumption by Shapiro that Shakespeare himself would have seen things Shapiro's way: That the original draft was "incoherent". That Shakespeare had to make a choice between "the integrity of his character and his plot". That he preferred conventional revenge-plot simplification to anything too "dark and existential."

I moved "Shakespeare" to my first fragment and "he" to the second (reversing them) and changed "his" to "the" in the first "that clause" because "he/his" could conceivably refer to "Shapiro/Shapiro's". Also I capped the first "That" after the colon. The general rule is you cap if what follows a colon is a complete sentence. But since there are fragments following, starting the same way, and those "Thats" are capped... well, really, I have three fragments as sentences following the colon, so I'd keep the capitalization coherent. Hey, sin boldly.

Anyway, the fragmentation here emphasizes the three problems the author has with Shapiro's assumptions. The colon (which starts a list) and the parallel structure emphasizes the emphasis, and also make the construction of the paragraph more formal (appropriate for academic publications). So I guess sin not-so-boldly. ;)

So... if you fragment a lot, challenge yourself. (Clearly, you cannot assume an editor is going to fix it for you.)
-First, recognize that this is a fragment. This is really essential. Fragments should be recognized. They can sometimes work, but they shouldn't be there because you can't distinguish a complete sentence from a fragment.

-Second, decide if this is intentional or accidental. If intentional, determine what your intention is. If accidental, well, accidents are meant to be fixed.

-Third, see what you're breaking up here. Is it a thought, a description, an explanation? If it's two thoughts you're breaking, consider if it would be better to have each thought a separate sentence, to give them each the weight of thought. If you're breaking a description or explanation (especially breaking a modifier off from the modified noun), connect it back and try breaking the sentence somewhere else. Modifiers usually belong with the word modified.

-Fourth, check for repetition. Repetition is often useful for clarity and for rhythm, but beware of creating the necessity for repetition merely to create a fragment. When you start a fragment with a repetition of one of the later words in the last sentence, that's a sign that you can probably adjoin it to the complete sentence without the repeated word.

-Fifth, if you want the fragmented thought separate, see if it can easily be made into a complete sentence. Try the legal workarounds (like the dash above). Experiment with different ways of presenting this and choose among them. Don't resort to fragments just because they're easy.
The most annoying fragments in my experience are relative clauses (the most common relative clauses begin with the relative pronouns who or which, and these are truly the most annoying of fragments). The pronouns that start a relative clause create a dependent clause, but those pronouns can be replaced with other pronouns that create an independent clause (complete sentence), and there's usually no reason not to do that. (Very occasionally, yes, I like to go with who or which for emphasis or to replicate the voice of the character, but again, those aims are not achieved when I often use this form of fragmentation. Less is more. Less is more. Less is more. Talk about repetition. :)
Here you go-- examples.
Which was the reason she'd divorced him.
This (or that) was the reason she'd divorced him. (Still a pronoun, but a demonstrative one, pointing back to the previous sentence, but also giving this sentence its very own subject.)
Who never had a chance to win her back.
He never had a chance to win her back.

Finally, if you think this is a justifiable fragment, one that adds to your meaning in some way and can't be done better in a sentence, do it well. Do it infrequently, so that when you do, the fragmentation stands out and creates some meaning beyond "I don't know what a sentence is." Do it judiciously-- decide where the fragment should begin in order to create the meaning you want. And do it with a thought to rhythm, to sound, and to situation. You might find that a series or pair of fragments gives more power and coherence than just one. (With a pair or series, parallel structure can emphasize the connection.)

Fragmentation is not an excuse for laziness. Rather, fragmenting a sentence, like any breaking of rules, should be done for a purpose, and done well, and create a result that's better than following the rule would create.

Alicia

Fragments, more obsession with

Let me start out by saying that fragments can serve a useful purpose, etc. And if you use a purposeful fragment, I as the reader or editor should get some greater meaning from the fragment being there. HOWEVER, that doesn't mean all or even most or even half or even a quarter of the fragments I see in submissions and student papers serve any purpose other than to make me question how closely you paid attention in 6th grade English.

How about challenging yourself? Whenever you use a sentence fragment, challenge yourself to explain why a sentence fragment is better here. If you can't, try to connect it to another sentence or make it a sentence by adding the necessary words. Now of course you can always justify anything, and if not, you can hire a lawyer to do it for you. But this isn't about your asserting your will over the editor. Ego isn't what matters here. Does the fragment's fragmentation add something that makes up for the momentary annoyance in the reader-- and the possible loss of credibility for you as the writer?

Often, frankly, this tendency to fragment is just laziness—you have an afterthought and just add it and don't notice or care that it is a fragment. Notice. Care. I will. And I'll be annoyed to have to do YOUR job. And I'm cranky when I'm annoyed. And you've lost credibility. Was it worth it? Yes? Okay, maybe there's a purpose to that fragment. But usually, really, fragments happen because you're not paying attention to your sentences and aren't noticing what goes with what, what adds to meaning, what connects.

Here's the sort of useless fragment that gives all fragments a bad name:

She contemplated the probable options. For the future.

Why on earth is "for the future" set off? It's a prepositional phrase that modifies or tells more about "options," and those two should go together—the modified and the modifier. We can probably even just eliminate the "for the future"—options are in the future by definition, right? But if you want to keep "future" for emphasis or rhythm, attach it. Make it belong. Make it have only the importance it should have—and that's not enough importance for its own sentence.

Sentences are units of meaning. Everything that goes together in a sentence belongs together. Everything cut off doesn't belong in that sentence. Every sentence is different (or should be), and each will have its own logic and coherence. But that flexibility requires more from you, not less, as a crafter of sentences.

Alicia

Subjective Omniscient

Being invited into a person's living quarters in New York City is a huge gesture of trust. Certainly their choice of art work, furniture, paint color, reveals much about their taste and style. But that's the case anywhere, isn't it? New York is different; it remains a city of neighborhoods built up along the lines of class and race: the Upper East Side for Old Money, the West Side for New. Downtown for the Trendies. And all sorts of strivers and dreamers and regular middle- and working-class folks sprinkled everywhere in between, snapping up any apartment that is bug-free (please!) and not too overpriced (pretty please!). But it's not necessarily the location are addressed that defines a person. You can lease a tiny, rent-controlled studio just off the East side's Madison Avenue -- or, one building over, own a massive multi-bedroom flat inherited from a wily old grandfather. In midtown offices, coworkers wonder if their peers are pulling themselves up by their bootstraps or are really just trust-fund babies. When impressions are everything, would you want any one to know the truth either way?

That's why regular, workaday New Yorkers "entertain" in restaurants. Cocktail bars. Meeting up at the museum. Oh, sure, you'll hear people say it's because of the size of their apartment. That the kitchen is too small to make a reasonable meal. But that's just part of the equation. Because unless you go out of your way to live hugely above or below your means, letting a friend, a colleague, a significant other into your home reveals everything: your attitudes, your sense of style... and the state of your pocketbook. It's one thing if your home is so grand as to intimidate, though in New York there is always someone who has more, bigger, seemingly better. Opening your apartment door invite envy or condescension. It changes the playing field.

The truth comes down to this: in a city obsessed with wealth and status, there are few gestures more intimate than being invited into someone's home.

So when Marty suggested to Anita that it would be fun to just stay in for a night, cook a meal together, and enjoy some wine, she panicked.

~~ from The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs

I've been thinking about doing little mini-units on some of the techniques employed in this book. She breaks a lot of rules, and she does it to good effect. Or, rather, perhaps rather than saying she breaks the rules, we should say that she's stretching the narrative with techniques we don't see much in genre fiction.

Here, for example, she uses a technique that Alicia discusses in her book on point of view. Those of you who have read Alicia's book might remember this. It's okay sometimes to start a scene in a more objective or omniscient point of view, and then gradually sink the reader lower down into the subjective third person.

So really, that's what the author is doing in this passage. Except her omniscient isn't exactly objective, is it? We get the sense of an actual narrator, a perspective being provided by someone outside the events of the book. This is sometimes called the intrusive author, but I've never liked that term because it implies that the author is doing something bad. Instead, let's call it subjective omniscient. The external narrator has a point of view.

One of the interesting things about the omniscient point of view is that it lends itself a little more readily to touches of formality. All the colons and semicolons don't jar in this passage, and I'm usually very sensitive to their presence. But because this passage reads in an almost academic manner, the more formal punctuation is less disruptive.

And yet the tone of the piece is anything but formal. Notice the way she incorporates an almost dialogue-like feeling in some of the prose. There are fragments, casual interjections like "oh, sure," rhetorical questions (who is asking what of whom, exactly?), and bits of slang to modernize this mini-treatise on New York apartments.

What else do you notice about this passage? Take a closer look at the way she chooses and organizes her words, and tell me in the comments what you see. And what effect it creates on the overall passage. This is highly controlled writing, and it's well worth a bit of your time to analyze it, even if this particular type of book isn't your first choice for reading pleasure.

Theresa

Back again...

Well, have a few minutes between papers and manuscripts. All day I've been working on writing something to help students understand what a sentence is and what a fragment is, and everything seems confusing and unhelpful. I mean, just about all the characteristics of a sentence can be replicated by a fragment ("A sentence has a clause, subject/verb"-- well, so does "Because I wanted to"... "A sentence states a complete thought"== Oh, yeah? How about "I'm not?" And lots of fragments are complete thoughts plus a word like "which" that diminishes it syntactically)...

The last straw was an otherwise helpful grammar website which defined clause as "A syntactic element that has both a subject and a predicate." Okay, let's move right past that "syntactic element" thing. "Predicate" was hyperlinked to its own definition. Yeah. "Part of a clause." Clause was, of course, hyperlinked to the original definition. Nothing like circularity. Oh, also, apparently a predicate "says something about the subject." (So does an adjective.)

No wonder students have so much trouble recognizing sentences and fragments. (Well, the major reason is, and here's where I get thrown out of the Teachers of English groups, kids don't grow up diagramming sentences. Weird that it's considered useless, when I took advanced grammar in grad school, and what was the main exercise? Sentence diagramming.)

So I decided to make my own schemata for clauses and sentences. And I'll share it with you. :) I'm trying to keep it simple, and trying not to despair ("There's no way to explain this! And they don't care! And anyway, everyone uses fragments all the time now!") and trying not to use complex terms. Just keep in mind, this is for students who don't understand sentences -- that is, not writers who occasionally choose, for effect or emphasis, to use fragments.

If you have suggestions, let me know. I'm going to post this to a couple of my classes later in the week. What has helped you know what a sentence is? How do you deal with all those existential questions? I mean, one of the definitions was that a sentence "states a proposition". Huh? It's like they're only talking about certain types of sentences.

(This had a box around it in Word, but apparently the lines disappeared into the ether. AND there were pretty colors distinguishing the subject and predicate. Sigh.)
Clauses
A clause is a unit of grammar that has a main subject and a main predicate combination. It is the essential building block of a sentence, expressing something about an object or person (the subject).


The subject is an item in the sentence that either acts:
• Paul hit the ball.
Or is acted upon:
• The ball is hit by Paul.
Or just exists in some state of being:
• Paul is good at hitting the ball.
The subject is usually a noun (thing-name) or pronoun (he/she/it/they/this/that—replacement for noun), or a combination phrase that centers on a noun or pronoun, but includes modifying words or phrases, like:
The dirty old baseball
The old baseball sailing into right field

The predicate is always a verb or verb phrase which identifies the action of the clause's subject:
• Paul hit the ball.
An important group of predicates identifies a state or condition of the subject. The two most common of these "stative predicates" are is and have.
• Paul has a lot of experience playing baseball.

The predicate phrase can have auxiliary verbs like was and could, which express tense or some other aspect of the action:
• Earlier, Paul was hitting the ball over the fence.

It can also have adverbs which modify the action somewhat.
• Paul hit the ball weakly.

Clauses and sentences:
A clause then combines a subject (the actor or acted-upon, usually earlier in the sentence) and the predicate.

A clause can be either independent (subject-predicate):
• Schools should not require the driver's exam.

or dependent (subject-predicate with a diminishment like a dependent conjunction):
Although schools should not require the driver's exam,

Independent clauses can be full sentences on their own, even if they are very short:
• I run.
Dependent clauses, no matter how long, cannot be full sentences on their own.
They must be attached to an independent clause to make a sentence:
• Although schools should not require the driver's exam, students should be encouraged to take the training course.


The best way I've found to learn how sentences work is to diagram sentences. This gives you a graphic and hands-on way to analyze what roles different words and phrases play. Here's a great site with lots of sentence diagramming exercises. Be sure and find the "Enter" button in the middle of the front page to get access to the exercises. Really, this is fun! Trust me!

Fragmentary thoughts

I fixed a fragment today in a book I'm editing, and did consider, "Maybe this is voice!" That is not, however, an argument that sways me all that much. I mean, if the writer's voice is good, I notice. :) And I notice when a fragment ISN'T contributing to that voice, as here:
(Of course, I'm changing the wording, just keeping the structure.)

She knew very well the requirements of her job. Such as typing, filing, and reconciling receipts.

That "such as" phrase is, of course, a fragment, and immediately I replaced the period with a comma:
She knew very well her job requirements, such as typing, filing, and reconciling receipts.

The "such as" is only an elaboration of "requirements." (Notice, btw, I just as immediately flipped to get "job requirements," first because it's more concise, reducing a prepositional phrase to a single-word adjective, and second because that puts "requirements," the modified noun, right next to the modifying phrase.) There is no advantage I can see for breaking off "such as" into its own sentence. There's nothing truncated, no elliptical word missing-- just a period instead of a comma. Nothing is gained by fragmenting that modifier, and much is lost, like coherence and correctness. The fragment annoys without contributing anything.

Actually, I might be okay if there were no "such as," which is, of course, a conjunction whose whole purpose is to conjoin examples to the thing exemplified. Let's try it just with the list:
She knew very well her job requirements. Typing, filing, and reconciling receipts.
Well, you know, I'd still generally put that into the same sentence, with a colon (if this was formalish) or a dash (if informalish) or a comma if I've been using too many dashes. :)

And in fact, I think I'd only take it out of the sentence if there was some surprise or irony, which is definitely not in the original sentence. Why bother call attention to anything that isn't attention-getting? Remember, anything non-standard is going to call attention to itself, so make it worthy of the attention, or do it the standard way. (All sentences have meaning, or should, but I think non-standardness is best reserved for a twist or dramatic moment. Remember, the more you use non-standard, the less impact it will have.)

So let's make that sentence more potent, just to illustrate:
She knew very well the requirements of her job. Typing, filing, and covering up the boss's embezzlement.

Hmm. I have to say, I'd probably go with a colon or dash, because the irony is stronger if we have the expected (the main clause) actually conjoined to the punchline.

She knew very well the requirements of her job: typing, filing, and covering up the boss's embezzlement.

Anyway, the conclusion is: It's all about context. And that context includes not only the whole standards issue, but also the meaning of the sentence, the import of fragment-ness, and the voice of the narrator (or author, if authorial voice is in control here).

I think, however, that the fragmentation itself should add some meaning, as it does, for instance, if it emphasizes the punchline, adds a staccato rhythm to the paragraph, or suggests the fragmentation of reality going on inside the narrator.

But fragments should never be the default. There should always be something added by the very fragmentation.
Alicia

Fragment examples

I asked for examples of fragments you kept, and ones you fixed (attaching to another sentence, say) in revision. Why did you keep the one and fix the other? How do they differ? Here are some of the examples in Comments, and whatever thoughts I have-- what do you think?

The next thing Cory heard was running footsteps. The door flung open. Hit the wall in a tremendous thud. People ran in. Many of them. Boots crunched over glass.

I actually thought that "The door flung open" was a fragment, because of that little weirdity of English conjugation that has "flung" as both the past tense and the past participle (alas, "fling" doesn't follow the "sing" conjugation pattern, that is, we don't say, "Fling flang flung). So if you read "flung" as the past participle-- that is, Cory heard running footsteps, and then heard the door flung open, that's a fragment too, continuing the "what Cory heard" thought. But the next, "Hit the wall," obviously is a continuation of "The door's" actions-- flung open, hit the wall.

I don't actually like that "Many of them" fragment. I'd probably connect that to the sentence before-- People ran in, many of them, their boots crunching over glass. (And I'd suggest replacing "people" with something more interesting if possible.) I don't know why. Why? Maybe it's because this is continuous motion, not really a perception but an action, and it feels like it out to be in one sentence to convey the unity and the swiftness.

Hmm... it's maybe hard to justify the preference of one fragment over another! I wonder if it's like what Patricia said, that the first is has an implied subject (The door) with two predicates (flung, hit), so it's clear what the fragment means.
Patricia gives this example:
Jill entered the closed. Poked around a bit. Turned and left.

Patricia said: The implied subject in the last two sentences, of course, is Jill. But if those sentences are removed from context, they become incomplete because the subject is unknown.

That seems important to me. When does the fragment become truly incomplete, when the meaning is lost? We don't want that sort of fragment, right?

That of course doesn't explain why the fragment type most likely to set my teeth to hurting is:
He headed for New Paris. Which was west of town.
It's clear what that fragment means-- no confusion. I guess it's because there is NO reason for a fragment there, and that it indicates to me the writer really doesn't know what a sentence is.

There was no sigh that showed she didn't want to be responsible for me. No nothing. Just straight matter-of-fact, no big deal. Maybe it wasn't.
Another example. I have to say I had a lot more trouble with all the negatives-- no sigh... didn't want... no.... I wasn't sure what was happening there. I suspect there's always a danger of confusion when you're writing about something that -didn't- happen (the sigh that didn't happen, but if it did happen, would mean she didn't want to be responsible-- see the doubling of negativity there? NO sigh ...NOT responsible and using past tense --that showed-- rather than a conditional -- that would show-- adds to the confusion).
The problem with the fragments isn't that they're fragments, but rather that they seem alike and yet refer to different things. The "no nothing" must refer to "no sigh," while the "just straight matter of fact, no big deal" refers to... her attitude? Her lack of feeling a lack of responsibility? That is, what the second fragment refers to isn't clear in the sentence preceding it. Does it have to refer back? Maybe not, but it must go with something like "she felt"?
This is fragments as pronouns, almost, that is, they're referring back to an antecedent, and if it's not clear what the antecedent is, does that mean the fragment is "incomplete" because the meaning isn't clear? What do you think?

Here's another:
Grimes and I could go on to answer a noise complaint that had come in half an hour ago and, as usual, got kicked aside in favor of higher priority calls. In this case, criminal trespassing.

Me, I like colons, so I'd be more likely to have "higher priority calls: in this case, criminal trespassing." But that would be hard to do across a paragraph break. (That is, I don't think we would end a paragraph on anything but a period or other terminal punctuation. Well, I might end with a dash.)
The one thought I have is that the fragment is singular -- THIS case-- while the "antecedent" is plural -- calls. Might be worth going with... in favor of a higher priority call. That is, there's an actual CALL that kicked aside the complaint, so probably I'd suggest casting it in the singular.


Okay, so we might not have come to much of a conclusion of what makes a fragment acceptable. Patricia did have some categories that might be worth exploring:
When I think of fragments, I think of three kinds: (1) where the subject is implied but not specified; (2) prepositional phrases; and (3) nouns by themselves, often an exclamation.

Hmm. I can see good examples-- acceptable examples-- for all of those, but unacceptable ones too. Maybe it's a matter of taste, that is, "If I read a fragment and I want to connect it with a sentence or add a word or two to make it a sentence, that's a bad fragment. If I get something beneficial out of it, a sense of rhythm, emotion, voice, then it's a good fragment?"

Alicia

Sentences and Fragments

I'm tossing this out for you all. I want you to look at your current manuscript and find a passage where you used a sentence fragment, and tell why. I'm asking this because of course, blah blah, bad, sentence fragments, but I also know how, when we're in voice, we often use fragments for effect, for rhythm, for characterization. So maybe you can give examples of fragments you kept, and ones you fixed (attaching to another sentence, say) in revision. And why did you keep the one and fix the other? How do they differ?

Another problem I have is explaining to my students what makes a fragment. Now, understand, if they've gotten to college and don't know what a sentence is, they aren't, um, necessarily absorbing the lessons well. But I find myself saying things like, "A sentence expresses a full thought," when you and I know that "I did" is just as much a sentence as "Charcot was the first neurologist, setting up practice in Paris in 1860 and serving as a major influence for Freud." So how would you define sentence and fragment? I throw up my hands and think if you have to ask, you'll never know.
Alicia

Sentence fragments

I have no problem with sentence fragments. No problem at all. :)

What I have a problem with is fragments that serve no purpose. Here's an example:
The editor was always bitching. About all sorts of things.

Now from a very accomplished writer-- you know, the type of writer whose voice just hums with authority, who can be counted on to experiment with prose and syntax and KNOW when it works and fix it when it doesn't-- I might think, "Oh! This very accomplished author wants me to read that differently than if it were one complete sentence!" And then I'll read it -that- way, and (rather like with enjambment in poetry) get both the broken up meaning and the complete meaning. So I'll read a great deal of exasperation there, even weariness. The editor was ALWAYS bitching. And then, I'll imagine a sigh, and the speaker/character/narrator wearily going on and starting to list all the many things the editor bitched about.

(This "reading"will be more likely if there is a series of fragments, a list of the bitch-topics, btw:
The editor was always bitching. About all sorts of things. About sentence fragments. About "everyone" as a singular noun. About dangling modifiers. Especially about dangling modifiers.)

If the author is trying replicate the staccato quality of some narrator's speech patterns, hey, I can go for that! I'm nothing if not avant-garde. :) But I won't believe that's what is happening if the rest of the manuscript is written in serviceable, not inspired, prose.

There's nothing wrong with serviceable prose, of course. It serves its purpose and doesn't get in the way of the story, but anything outre (there's an accent mark there, but I don't know how to do it in html and I'm too hungry to go look it up!) in serviceable prose is likely to be interpreted as a mistake, not as an experiment. And, well, that's because it usually IS a mistake.

So if you can identify a sentence fragment in your own passage and explain (as I just did about the bitchy editor) how the reader will "hear" it, why it adds to the reader's experience, and why it's worth violating sentence rules, okay! I'll be right there with you, egging you on. "Your narrator is a teenaged girl! So why not put in a 'duh' or two there, just to make the narrative sound more like her?"

(I tell my students that if they use a sentence fragment, they have to put an asterisk there and then at the end of the paper, explain WHY they made that a fragment and why it works better than a complete sentence would. If you think that's evil, keep in mind that when I started teaching 20 years ago, we were told to fail immediately any paper with a sentence fragment. That was unofficial policy. See how much nicer I am now?)

But more often, what I see are sentence fragments that serve no purpose, that the author doesn't recognize as sentence fragments, that add nothing to the experience of reading (except annoyance). Those are the ones I quickly edit, usually by linking them right to the previous sentence, or replacing "which" with "this," or something else the author could just as easily have done himself.

Here are a few examples, culled (and modified) from submissions and student papers.

John was about to leave. Although he wanted to stay.

I already knew the truth. The truth being that she didn't love me anymore.

She pulled off her jacket. Her cardigan too. (This actually might work, if the rest of the narration seemed conversationally adroit. So... why would that work?)

Gas prices were rising through the roof. The stock market falling.

Joella wasn't easily shocked now. By swearing. (See, if the fragment was "By anything," I'd think that it was meant to be emphatic, and thus purposeful.)

Too many people had already emigrated. Because of the potato famine.

She decided to go to dinner. With the group of skateboarders.

He turned the ignition on. Which started right up.

So how about some examples in comments? Most of the above, I'd just edit to connect the sentences. But see, there are two examples that made me speculate. Under what circumstances would you use a sentence fragment, and how would you explain it? Can you give an example? Or would you never use one if you could help it?

(Let me say that I don't consider dialogue as needing a justification for non-standard English, as long as the dialogue works. But even in dialogue, fifteen sentence fragments in a row will sound a bit... jagged. Theresa, please ignore ellipsis. Or if you can't, here's my justification. I wanted it clear that I was hesitating, searching for an adjective, and that perhaps I'd discarded a more nasty one.)

Something to remember: Many of your readers are likely to be sophisticated readers, who read more than just the words to get the meaning. They're reading the rhythm, the structure of sentences, the punctuation, the word choice, the ratio of black ink (or pixels) to white paper (or screen). They're even reading the shape of words. All this can add to the meaning of the passage. They will love it when you exploit their greater meaning-making ability to good purpose. But their greater sensitivity means that they will be put off by signifiers that are NOT to a purpose, because they will react with a meaning-making that turns out to be unfulfilled-- meaning interruptus! (Tell me you know what I mean!)

And how do you know if you are at the level where you can play with those sensitive readers, or if you should stick with serviceable and correct prose?

Alicia