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

1. subordinate one of the sentences;
2. coordinate the sentences by separating with a comma and conjunction (see rule 1);
3. separate with a semicolon (see rule 2); or
4. 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:

1. Peyton and Cloudy, two cute felines on campus.
2. We want to go to the under-the-lights game across town, we have already painted our faces blue.
3. 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