• Sentences must have a subject and a verb.
• The sentence questions are the following:
Who or what did or is something? (subject)
What did they do? or What are they? (verb)
• Fragments are missing either a subject or a verb.
Don't let these confuse you:
• A capital letter and period do not make a sentence a sentence.
(However, you do need them to make a sentence correct.)
• Beware the " -ing."
That thing that looks like a verb that ends in "-ing" is not acting as a verb unless it has a helping (auxiliary) verb with it.
Students editing (not a sentence)
vs. students edit ( a sentence)
*List Of Helping Verbs: am, are, is, was, were, be, being, been
have, has, had
shall, will
do, does, did
may, must, might
can, could, would, should
See more information on the dangerous "-ing" here:
What is a Helping (Auxiliary) Verb?
Now, the challenge!
Because -- On the bubble sheet sentence test we took,
the most-missed question was a two-word sentence.
Two Word Wonder
Number the page in your composition book from one through 11.
For each of the following answer
S for sentence or F for fragment
1. He paced.
2. And mosquitoes.
3. Stacy gasped.
4. Eric stirred.
5. And gnats.
6. Another corpse.
7. Jeff shrugged.
8. Amy turned.
9. To look.
10. Jeff nodded.
11. Jeff sighed.
S for sentence or F for fragment
