Sentence Fragments and Run-on sentences

[Clevernick]

This is the other thing that, in my experience, many writers have trouble with, even the pros at times. The following rules may be broken within speech, but not in narrative, until you have sold at least 500,000 copies of a book. Then you can tell me when exceptions may be made.

1. A sentence contains one verb. No less. If it's less, add one. If more, see rules three and four. So these are wrong:


Up on the ridge. (No verb, so not a sentence. Allowed only in speech.)
She went to the liquor store and bought some Frangelico and drove home and drank herself into a stupor and woke up hung over. (Too many verbs.)

2. Participles, such as "eating", "lying", "writhing", are not, by themselves, verbs!


Lying beside her on the bed. (Not a sentence because "lying" isn't a verb)
The robot lying beside her on the bed. (Still the same problem)
The robot was lying beside her on the bed. (Better)


3. Commas do not join sentences. Join two closely-related sentences with a semicolon.



Commas do not join sentences, join two closely-related sentences with a semicolon. (Wrong)
Commas do not join sentences; join two closely-related sentences with a semicolon. (Better)



Exceptions (very short sentences, etc) only as in Strunk and White: http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk.html

4. Conjunctions (and, but, or) may join related sentences, but don't get carried away. There had better be a close relationship and that relationship should be shown by the conjunction.

"It was a sunny day and she screamed." is not a good use of a conjunction.

My sub really hates this particular whip, I like it. (wrong)
My sub really hates this particular whip and I like it. (poor)
My sub really hates this particular whip; I like it. (correct but ambiguous)
My sub really hates this particular whip but I like it. (good - relationship explained)
My sub really hates this particular whip; that's why I like it. (excellent)



5. Memorize Strunk chapter II (it's very short!) and then re-read the above.
Strunk chapter II again: http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk.html

Some of Strunk's rules from 1918, like the use of serial commas, are becoming more flexible lately. Still you will do much better knowing these than not knowing them. They are the anchor; without them you are adrift. Know them and build.

[MMI]

None of the above applies to simple phrases. You can disregard them utterly even if you have never published a word before.

And, of course, it is perfectly possible to break rules without knowing them, and still be understood - and that's what most writers are aiming for. After all, what authority is there for any rule of grammar? Certainly not OUP or the US Government Printing Office. Their standards have persuasive authority only.

Common usage is the only reliable authority I can think of.

I, personally, reject any notion that the possesive form of Jesus is Jesus' and the suggestion that the possessive of conscience is conscience' is supremely ridiculous.

It's not bad grammar that is the problem - any one of us can cope with grammatical mistakes while we are reading, and most of us will pass over them without even noticing. The rest of us are probably pedants.

No, the real problem is poor expression: not making the proper connections between your thoughts and your writing. You know what you mean, but somehow, you set it down on paper ambiguously.

I once submited a piece of writing for a competition in which I broke virtually every rule of grammar that applied. But my story made perfect sense and conveyed the flavour of the character's thoughts that rigid grammatical precision would have destroyed. I didn't think, as I was writing, Ah! I shall ignore the need to make sure subject and verb agree. I simply had to write it that way.

[Alex Bragi]

MM1, I don't know enough about the techincal side of writing to agree or disagree with you however, (fuck! I hope that comma's in the right place *gg*) no matter which way you look at it, I feel sure this thread of Clevernick's will be of interest to and a good reference for almost all writers here.

:)

[MMI]

Actually, I posted my response to Clevernick before I noticed it was a "Sticky" - which I assume means it has the authority of a Papal Bull or something (exaggerating for effect: no sarcasm intended). My post was really just to point out that there are no hard-and-fast rules in English grammar, although I do recognise all of those mentioned by Clevernick and I know they are widely accepted. But I now realise I have posted in the wrong place. Accordingly, I would be happy for it to be moved to a general discussion area (with a reference to Clevernick's post too) and hopefully it will provoke an interesting debate or deepen people's understanding of good writing. Lord knows, I need help there!

My attack - if attack it was - was against William Strunk, not Clevernick. Maybe his "rules" were appropriate in USA in 1918, but English is much less rigid nowadays, and has moved on from where it was at the end of World War I.

[fetishdj]

English is one of the most contradictory and strangest languages in existence in terms of grammar. Quite often the rules do not make sense because it has been garnered from several sources over the years and in a way that was actually illogical because the original scholars who compiled the rules in the 17th century made certain assumptions. The main one they made was that English was a Latinate/Romantic language when really it is a Latinate/Germanic hybrid being derived from both Anglo-saxon and Norman French roots. An example of this is the use of the words Pig and Pork and Cow and Beef to describe the animal and the food that comes from it.

This why the rules of English grammar often do not make sense when compared to other languages. It is also why it is easy to break said laws without knowing it.

A good reference (certainly for punctuation abuse) is Lynn Truss's 'Eats, shoots and leaves' which is a fun and irreverent look at grammar abuse for pedants.

You can also often get away with breaking the laws when the aesthetics of a written work are affected by it. The classic example of this is the Star Trek 'to boldly go' rather than the correct 'to go boldly'. The latter is grammatically correct whereas the former has a greater poetic quality. I am not sure whether being published gives you the right to break the rules but more having the confidence to be able to apply the poetic license laws correctly and be able to tell an editor this without them eating you alive (bearing in mind that good editors are usually horrible, nasty pedants who get a kick out of making you suffer :) ).

[Clevernick]

Okay, pedantics aside. I don't care if you boldly split an infinitive, or dangle a participle. At least not so long as you don't dangle it in a ludicrous place, as in Strunk's example:


Being in a dilapidated condition, I was able to buy the house very cheap.

The list of stuff I pointed to above is stuff that authors routinely screw up that just LOOKS WRONG to the reader. It breaks people out of the story. Even people who would write that way themselves are unsettled by these errors. Then maybe they get distracted.

And if you're trying to convince a reader to part with their lunch money to buy your book, the last thing you want is to have them lose interest in your story and start thinking about their laundry, or their boyfriend, or your grammar.

Please, guys. I'm a linguist too, and I'm well aware of the difference between Romance and Germanic grammar (since I had to learn French, Italian and Swedish all the hard way.) And English grammar is NOT illogical. (The spelling is, but not the grammar.)

English Grammar is a joy. It is a more refined and powerful version of Nordic grammar, or Northern Germanic if you prefer, and it's quite consistent. It includes several extra features over its similar but simpler cousins (like Nordic or Dutch) that make it possible to pack ideas more powerfully and tightly.

But only if you take the trouble to use them correctly.

Of all the thousands of ways that people can and do use them incorrectly, I've gone to the trouble of picking just five above that really force me to edit an otherwise great story. This is a service to you. It's to help you sharpen your writing in a powerful way, with a minimum of learning and effort. I hope you appreciate it.

[Clevernick]

P.S. I gave two cases where these rules can be broken. One is in spoken dialogue, because people don't have to speak grammatically.

The other is when you're a bestselling author and you don't have to listen to pedants.

I don't agree that there are other times.

[DarkPoet]

P.S. I gave two cases where these rules can be broken. One is in spoken dialogue, because people don't have to speak grammatically.

The other is when you're a bestselling author and you don't have to listen to pedants.

I don't agree that there are other times.

Maybe (just maybe, I don't really want to encourage anyone to break grammer rules just for the fun of it) you could add first person narrative here, which is - in some aspects - very close to spoken dialogue. To describe intense or complicated emotions, one often needs to employ stylistic elements like an elipsis or a climax and ends up with one of the don'ts you listed. The important point there is not to overdo it. :)

[Clevernick]

Maybe (just maybe, I don't really want to encourage anyone to break grammar rules just for the fun of it) you could add first person narrative here, which is - in some aspects - very close to spoken dialogue. To describe intense or complicated emotions, one often needs to employ stylistic elements like an ellipsis or a climax and ends up with one of the don'ts you listed. The important point there is not to overdo it. :)

Yes, agreed on all counts. But it's a borderline area -- it's very tempting to use incorrect grammar, styled as natural speech, to establish the character's voice, and then it's very very hard for the author or the editor to go through and edit the results definitively. How can you tell where the voice ends and the bad grammar begins? I think that's why most beginning authors are advised to avoid first-person narrative.

[ElectricBadger]

As Clevernick mentioned, English grammar actually makes a scary amount of sense, but is based hugely upon word order. "The man eats fish." "The fish eats man." This is not so true in many other languages; English allows brevity and inflection, and avoids a long series of conjugations, but it also means screwing up sentence structure can render a statement unintelligible. (As a sidenote, most English spelling makes a great deal of sense if only you were speaking the Middle English original. A knight, for instance, has all his letters pronounced).

It's interesting to note that most bad written grammar is glaring for the simple fact that it's so different from common usage. Grammar is the correct way to speak, not artistic interpretation. For the most part, correct grammar sounds more natural and coherent, because that is the point of grammar.

There are exceptions, and I don't think dialogue or fame have much to do with them: I wouldn't recommend anyone say "Is it I, or does this sound funny?" even though that's grammatically correct. Famous writers break convention because they understand the impact of doing so, and use that as a form of communication, not because they are above it (as a good photographer will use black and white because it enhances aspects they wish to communicate, not because they're too good to bother with proper film). Dialogue is the same way; if I use "ain't" in a dialogue, for instance, it's good to understand that my character will come across as uneducated, unintelligent and rural. If I intend that, then it enhances my work and is proper writing; if it doesn't, then it is failure. I need to understand that in writing because accidentally having a slick world-famous lawyer spout "ain't" can destroy an entire piece.

Of course you can break rules without knowing them and get away with it, but that's simple luck, which isn't very reliable. And frankly, if you don't know what's right, you'll be the last one to know it's wrong, and probably the last one to realize it didn't work at all.

As for authorities, we have whole institutions of learning at our disposal, and it's worth our time to consider what they're saying. Resources compiled by professionals and professors -- such as the MLA handbook -- are subject to extensive and intense peer review, and give us a communal assertation of what is correct. Nor are the rules of the English language vague: what you and I speak and write every day is not a simple circumstance, but the work of generations to refine and define. Thank or blame the Victorians, they've had their way and defined our language with rigid rules of standardization, and society has incorporated these eagerly. So in short -- assuming there's no authority is really just trying to impose your own. Not a horrible thing (I do it too; I refuse to capitalize god or the pope, or christianity or islam. I do enjoy capitalizing in Emphasis, a custom the Victorians ended for Reasons I Disagree With). But again, it's important to understand that such a thing is unusual, and to consider my audience. A sci fi novel about space exploration is not a proper forum to introduce unique capitalization; an essay on the benefit of grammar might be.

Anyhow; thank you very much for your post, Clevernick. I agree with most, though not all; but it's certainly all worth learning.

[TomOfSweden]

I recommend the whole of Elements of Style. Not just chapter 2. I try to re-read it every few months. It's extremely condensed and stuff you need to know if you want to write effectively.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Elements-Style-William-Strunk/dp/020530902X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214825481&sr=8-1

[Shwenn]

I don't like the sentence fragment rule. I think it can be quite effective if used correctly. I also think an effective sentence fragment is discernable upon inspection, credentials are unneccessary.

Anybody who needs for you to be a best selling author before they know if your use of a sentence fragment is effective has no business giving writing advice.

Don't use a sentence fragment unless you know what you are doing. If you can't give a good reason for doing it, you shouldn't do it. That is what the advice should be. That advice is same for most rules in writing.

Arudahti Roy, in her first novel ever, uses a sentence fragment that I can remember today, five years after reading it. It was that powerful.

"She was thirty years old. A viable, diable age."

All I could think when I read it was, 'I wish I had written that'.

[Pearlgem]

'Elements of Style' (Strunk and White) is brilliant for threads/arguments and clarifying your thoughts, but don't forget those elements of creative style which make a piece of fiction so pleasing to read:

*keep it realistic, even if it's entirely fantasy. We respond to realistic reactions in fantastical situations, so use your imagination and your knowledge,

*keep it simple - don't elaborate action at the expense of interesting detail. Don't over tell story - that can be boring. Try to show not tell. Try to intimate what a character is like instead of giving a police profile. Try not to start with, (or revert to), exposition unless you can do it deliberately and stylishly.

*don't forget to describe how things look and how people feel/react - may seem very basic, but being short changed here matters to the reader.

*when detail is required, don't disappoint - (unless you judge that brevity suits your purposes better).

*play with words, phrases, constructs and always edit your work with an ear to what sounds right and expresses your idea best. (You should find yourself cutting down and tightening up/scrapping some bits and elaborating others.) The more you practice, the better you'll get.

Have you done your homework??

[drkfetyshnyghts]

When I write. I write like I'm living it. Feeling it. To obey all the conventions of proper english and proper writing would ruin the flow for me. Surely in BDSM writing, its the content and the mind of the writer rather than the technical competence that is most important? The ramblings of a twitsed mind!

Probably I am missing something. But then I am a girl.

drky xxx

[blythe spirit]

This thread is well worth the read. Interesting. I endeavor to be as grammatically correct in my writing as the imperfections of today's grammar will allow. Oft' times I fail.



I once submited a piece of writing for a competition in which I broke virtually every rule of grammar that applied. But my story made perfect sense and conveyed the flavour of the character's thoughts that rigid grammatical precision would have destroyed. I didn't think, as I was writing, Ah! I shall ignore the need to make sure subject and verb agree. I simply had to write it that way.

The above quote amazes me. Of course, you didn't say if you "won" the competition, or not? I've found competition to be extremely technical on proper grammar, even when not grammar related, because there are an abundance of entries. I was once disqualified, because I used my initials, rather than my full first name. Guess they never heard of e.e. cummings or T.S. Eliot. lol

Due to the rigidity of competition, MMI, I was always pleased when my piece was awarded. Obviously, they judged on more than the content. I would really like to know in what competitions proper grammar is not expected, because I'd like to enter. hehehe

[jeanne]

When I write. I write like I'm living it. Feeling it. To obey all the conventions of proper english and proper writing would ruin the flow for me. Surely in BDSM writing, its the content and the mind of the writer rather than the technical competence that is most important? The ramblings of a twitsed mind!

This works great if you're writing for yourself. Or, writing to get an idea on paper - which you will then edit. But to write in a way that makes no sense and has no natural flow for another reader - means you won't have other readers.



Probably I am missing something. But then I am a girl.


What? Are you implying girl = not smart? Surely you aren't. :confused:

[MMI]

This thread is well worth the read. Interesting. I endeavor to be as grammatically correct in my writing as the imperfections of today's grammar will allow. Oft' times I fail.




The above quote amazes me. Of course, you didn't say if you "won" the competition, or not? I've found competition to be extremely technical on proper grammar, even when not grammar related, because there are an abundance of entries. I was once disqualified, because I used my initials, rather than my full first name. Guess they never heard of e.e. cummings or T.S. Eliot. lol

Due to the rigidity of competition, MMI, I was always pleased when my piece was awarded. Obviously, they judged on more than the content. I would really like to know in what competitions proper grammar is not expected, because I'd like to enter. hehehe

Not even placed!

Your implied suggestion that only if I'd won would my earlier post have been valid is refuted. By expecting me to win, you are, perhaps, less demanding than those who permit me to only use bad grammar if I've sold half a million books, but I reject your yardstick as much as theirs.

I did receive several complimentary messages from readers and fellow competitors, however, and not one of them objected to the grammatical "mistakes".

But I suspect that hardly anyone here - if anyone at all - finds my incorrect use of English interferes with their understanding of what I say. I would go so far as to suggest that pedantic adherence to correct grammar can and frequently does make comprehension much harder, however - to the unending joy of lawyers, no doubt; and if that is the case, I'm all for disregarding the rules. Common usage is greater authority than Strunk and Fowler combined!

Remember, whole languages have developed and are spoken fluently by man and child without the need for grammarians to impose their arcane rules about what word order to use, whether a word is a noun or a substantive, and how it should be declined, or how a verb must be conjugated. They are probably all the better for it.

[Ninva]

I make one exception for my writers; they may break rules of grammar to create emphasis.

[John Tagliaferro]

Do the English! Memorize it and move along.
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