Question

Fragments can make your writing harder to follow. Here’s a paragraph that contains five fragments:

Space is full of junk. There are currently more than 50,000 pieces of debris. In Earth’s orbit. Most pieces of “space junk” are human-made objects. Such as broken satellites or bits of spacecrafts. Space junk can travel at speeds of up to 18,000 mph. Which is fast enough to cause serious damage. If it hits a space station or shuttle. Even a tiny scrap of paint can crack a window. Fortunately, collisions are extremely rare. And nobody has been killed by space junk.

1. Copy the paragraph into the text box and revise it so that there are no sentence fragments. Here are some tips:
Look for places where you can combine sentences.
Think carefully about whether you need a comma before conjunctions like “and.”

2. The next time you write an essay, how will you check your work for fragments?

Answer 1

Revised paragraph (no fragments):

Space is full of junk. There are currently more than 50,000 pieces of debris in Earth’s orbit. Most pieces of “space junk” are human-made objects, such as broken satellites or bits of spacecraft. Space junk can travel at speeds of up to 18,000 mph, which is fast enough to cause serious damage if it hits a space station or shuttle. Even a tiny scrap of paint can crack a window. Fortunately, collisions are extremely rare, and nobody has been killed by space junk.

How I'll check my work for fragments next time:

- Read each sentence aloud to hear whether it expresses a complete thought.
- Check that each sentence has both a subject and a main verb.
- Watch for clauses that start with words like which, because, if, when, or although and make sure they’re attached to a main clause.
- Combine short sentence fragments with nearby sentences or add the missing subject/verb to make them complete.
- Use a grammar checker and, when unsure, ask someone else to proofread.