Well, okay. End of article.
No, it's not that simple.
They are okay in things like novels where the writing is polished, but not formal. The narration is done in the author's voice and expressed through a
character's point of view. So not only do you hear the way the author thinks, all of the words go through a second filter making sure they are true to the way the character thinks.
If the main character is male, there are going to be fragments. Just sayin'. And if the poor fella is from the south, have mercy on him! Jeff Foxworthy said that Texas was the only place he knew where "I tell you what" was it's own complete sentence. There's nothing else. That's it. Big fat period.
So there are places, like blogs ... ahem ... where fragments are completely acceptable. Even preferred. (For instance, if I said in the last sentence, "They're even preferred," you would not only lose my voice and the way I talk, but the sentence itself wouldn't latch onto the one before it quite as tightly.)
However, don't fill up a college essay, research paper, or thesis with a bunch of fragments. (Oh and don't use bunch either.) Your teacher/prof will surely count off, but that's not the worst part. When you show such obvious mistakes, your teacher will miss the point. How can you share how brilliant you are when you leave out necessary parts of speech? It's like forgetting to capitalize the first letter of a sentence.
Every sentence in formal writing needs a simple subject and a simple predicate (that's a noun and verb or as I taught my 4th graders, "Who did what?") In formal writing you will most likely not use the word you in your paper nor imply it, so every sentence should actually have it's own STAR. A person, place, thing, or idea that takes action or has being in your sentence. And that action or being is what the STAR does or is. (IE the verb.) Once you connect with those two parts you're on a down hill slide. Just make sure you don't leave your STAR hanging anywhere. Jazy Josey ran to the window when she was supposed to be.
Um ... excuse me, but inquiring minds wanna know. What was Josey supposed to be doing? Yeah, don't do that. Make sure your sentence ties itself up in a little bow. Keeping it's arms and legs firmly within the sentence.
Are fragments a trouble spot for you? What is your grammar t-zone?
May your satisfaction overflow!
