| 20 | Sentence fragment |
NO SUBJECT
NO COMPLETE VERB
Sitting cannot function alone as the verb of the sentence. The auxiliary verb was makes it a complete verb.
BEGINNING WITH A SUBORDINATING WORD
A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is written and punctuated as if it were a complete sentence. A fragment may lack a subject, a complete verb, or both. Fragments may also begin with a subordinating word (such as because) that makes the fragment depend on another sentence for its meaning. Reading your draft out loud, backwards, sentence by sentence, will help you spot sentence fragments easily. (See Chapter 39.)