I recently went over sentence fragments—what they are and
why they are a problem. As I was reading a manuscript this weekend, however, I
suddenly realize that I neglected to mention the type of sentence fragment that
is probably the most common: the “-ing”-verb sentence fragment.
Now, the -ing verb
(or present participle) is a subject
that I’ve covered a few times before. It’s a form of verb that is usually used
to indicate that one action is being performed simultaneously to another
action. For example:
Gasping for
breath, Amy slowed to a stop.
The above sentence indicates that two actions are occurring at
the same time—Amy was gasping while
she slowed to a stop.
Note that only one of the verbs in that sentence (gasping) is an -ing verb. The second verb (slowed)
is a simple past-tense verb paired with the subject of the sentence, Amy. That’s because an -ing verb cannot serve as
the primary verb of a sentence.
Remember: the most common use of the -ing verb is to indicate simultaneous actions—it can’t be used
without another verb in the sentence that is conjugated to pair up with a
subject, as in our example above. When writers attempt to use an -ing verb as the primary verb of the
sentence, they end up with sentence fragments like this:
Driving to the
store.
This example has no subject! Who is driving to the store?
 |
| Pictured: The scene created by the sentence fragment "Driving to the store." |
His head
pounding.
This example has a noun that could function as a subject, if it weren’t paired with an -ing verb.
Gasping for
breath, her lungs burning and her legs aching.
Again, this example has nouns (lungs and legs), but it
has no verbs that aren’t in -ing format,
so it is still a sentence fragment.
Now, you might look through your manuscript and find a
sentence like this:
Amy was running
in the park.
That sentence doesn’t follow the same format as our good
example above, does it? But it’s an -ing
verb, and it’s grammatically sound. But note that there is a second verb in that sentence, one that is conjugated to work
properly with the subject: was. That’s
why this sentence works where the others didn’t.
(You might also note that there is no simultaneous action in
that sentence. Take a moment, though, to think about how that sentence would be
used. It would probably be part of an introduction to a scene, don’t you think?
“Amy was running in the park. A dog approached her with a human hand in its mouth.” The simultaneous action
is still there—it will just be in a different sentence.)
As I said before, this is probably the most common type of
sentence fragment that I run across in manuscripts. So keep an eye on any
sentences you have that feature an -ing
verb, and make sure that they also have a proper subject and verb. Even then,
though, there’s a lot of ways that -ing
verbs can go wrong. To make sure everything is in order, go back through the
rest of the “Minding Your ‘-ings’”
series to make sure that your -ings
are all square: here’s the links to Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
