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Sentence Superhero Training Part 1
All right. I see you made it to my secret hide out. I’m Sentence Superhero. I fight
off fragments and run-ons so that students can write proper sentences. I’m so busy
these days that you all are here to become Sentence Superheroes In-Training. Are you
ready for your first lesson?
To be a good Sentence Superhero, you will need to be able to recognize fragments. A
fragment is an incomplete sentence—a sentence that doesn’t have any independent clause
in it. So, it’s part of a sentence, a fragment of a sentence, but not a complete sentence.
The opposite of a fragment is a run-on. Those can be tricky to spot. A run-on sentence is
one where the clauses – either independent clauses or dependent clauses – have been
joined incorrectly. This is often a punctuation problem or a lack of conjunctions and transitions.
You recognize a run-on sentence because it seems like one sentence runs on into the other
sentence. Think of two cars running into each other and they get stuck together. Sometimes
sentences get into accidents and get stuck together when they shouldn’t.
Did you know that we use punctuation in English to represent pauses and breaks? Without the
proper punctuation and conjunctions, it is very difficult to read a sentence or a paragraph.
The sentences get stuck together and it’s hard to tell where one ends and another one
begins.
So, you’ve learned about fragments and run-ons in this part of your training to become Sentence
Superheroes. Our next lesson will be about the four structures of sentences. Hurry though,
I really need your help.