BUS603: Managing People

In informal conversation, we often speak in partial sentences, as in the response of Holly below: 

This reply is fine in colloquial speech, but when put in writing, it becomes a sentence fragment. Sentence fragments don't belong in business writing. 

Watch this video to review the three fundamental parts of a sentence. 

The video identifies three building blocks: subjects, verbs, and complements. Subjects are the actors in the sentence; they either "do" or simply "are" something. Verbs describe the action - what is happening. Complements add meaning to the sentence by completing or further specifying the actor and the action.  

If a collection of words ends in a period but does not contain both a subject and a verb, it is a sentence fragment. To avoid fragments, make sure that every sentence you write has both a subject and a verb and can stand alone. 

When the subject and verb work together to express an idea, you've got a clause. Clauses are the basic building blocks of sentences. Phrases (which may have nouns, verbs, and other parts of speech) do not have subjects; nothing is doing the action in a phrase. 

Competent writers need to understand the difference between a phrase and a clause, and between independent and dependent clauses. This video clarifies the differences:

The video shows examples of phrases and clauses and clarifies that dependent clauses leave the reader needing more information to complete the idea of the sentence. Independent clauses can stand alone. 

In the next chapter, we'll examine how phrases and clauses affect punctuation, especially the placement of commas. For now, we'll keep Fundamental #1 simple: Never use a phrase or a dependent clause as a sentence. Make sure all of your sentences contain at least one independent clause. Otherwise, your writing (and worse, your thinking) might appear fragmented.