Practice in Correcting Needless Sentence Fragments

An Editing Exercise

fragment exercise - boy playing with toy

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This exercise offers practice in identifying and correcting needless sentence fragments during the editing stage of the writing process.

Instructions

The following descriptive paragraph contains three needless sentence fragments. First, identify the three fragments, and then correct each one--either by attaching it to an adjacent sentence or by turning the fragment itself into a complete sentence. When you're done, compare your corrected sentences with those in the edited version of the paragraph below

Anthony (unedited draft)

My five-year-old son Anthony is built like a little wind-up toy. His black curly hair, bushy eyebrows, a cute button nose, and chubby cheeks, which people can't resist pinching. These make him look like a life-size teddy bear. Anthony loves to wear his favorite black leather jacket with the image of Mumble the penguin on the back. And jeans with patches on the knees as a result of the holes he puts in them while crawling on the floor, pushing his toy cars around. Indeed, he is a very energetic little boy. In one afternoon, he will ride his bicycle, play video games, complete a 200-piece jigsaw puzzle, and, of course, play with his toy cars. In fact, his energy scares me sometimes. For example, that time on the roof. He shinnied up a tree and jumped onto the roof. However, he wasn't energetic (or bold) enough to climb back down, and so I had to rescue my wonderful little wind-up toy.

Here is the edited version of "Anthony," the descriptive paragraph that served as the model for the sentence-fragment editing exercise. Keep in mind that there are multiple ways of correcting the three fragments in the exercise.

Anthony (edited version)

My five-year-old son Anthony is built like a little wind-up toy. He has black curly hair, bushy eyebrows, a cute button nose, and chubby cheeks, which people can't resist pinching. These make him look like a life-size teddy bear. Anthony loves to wear his favorite black leather jacket with the image of Mumble the penguin on the back and his favorite jeans, the ones with patches on the knees. The patches cover the holes that came about from crawling on the floor, pushing his toy cars around. Indeed, he is a very energetic little boy. In one afternoon, he will ride his bicycle, play video games, complete a 200-piece jigsaw puzzle, and, of course, play with his toy cars. In fact, his energy scares me sometimes. For example, I will never forget that time he shinnied up a tree and jumped onto the roof. However, he wasn't energetic (or bold) enough to climb back down, and so I had to rescue my wonderful little wind-up toy.

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Your Citation
Nordquist, Richard. "Practice in Correcting Needless Sentence Fragments." ThoughtCo, Feb. 16, 2021, thoughtco.com/practice-in-correcting-needless-sentence-fragments-1692396. Nordquist, Richard. (2021, February 16). Practice in Correcting Needless Sentence Fragments. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/practice-in-correcting-needless-sentence-fragments-1692396 Nordquist, Richard. "Practice in Correcting Needless Sentence Fragments." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/practice-in-correcting-needless-sentence-fragments-1692396 (accessed March 29, 2024).