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Honors 9th Literature
Daily Grammar / PSAT Practice # 17
FRAGMENTS and RUN-ONS
What do the following two groups of sentences have in common?
 Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, is an isolated island 2,000 miles from the coast of South America, it has
captured the attention of historians and anthropologists worldwide.
 Wondered about those massive statues surrounding the island.
One thing they have in common is that neither is a sentence.
Recall that a sentence is a group of words that expresses a complete thought and that, in English, every sentence has
two main parts: a complete subject and a complete predicate.
Fixing Fragments
 Add a subject or verb to complete the thought.
 Attach the fragment to the sentence before or after it, if it makes sense to do so.
 Drop or replace words.
Fixing Run-ons
 Separate the two sentences using end punctuation and capitalization.
 Use a comma and coordinating conjunction.
 Insert a semi-colon and transitional word or phrase followed by a comma.
 Insert a subordinating conjunction.
Try it: Fix the fragment or run-on in each of the sentences.
1. The islanders having had the only written language in that part of the Pacific.
2. Because their stonework resembled that of the Incas. People though the islanders came from South
America.
3. Easter Island boasts nearly 1,000 statues some are nearly 30 feet tall and weigh up to 80 tons.
4. Captain Cook visited the island more than 225 years ago, he speculated on how the statues might have been
slowly lifted using scaffolding.
5. Named by a Dutch explorer.
6. The tiny spit of an island is remote still it is inhabited today.
7. The island’s lush palm forests were destroyed, cleared for farming.
Identify the sentence error. If an underlined word or phrase contains a grammatical error, choose the part that
must be changed to correct the sentence.
Several guesthouses on the island greeting visitors.
Improve the sentence. Select the answer choice that best expresses the meaning of the underlined portion of the
original sentence.
Easter Island, one of the most isolated places on the planet.
a. Easter Island, one of the most isolated places on the planet.
b. Easter Island is one of the most isolated places on the planet.
c. Easter Island, the most isolated place on the planet.
d. Easter Island, one of the most isolated places on the planet, far away.
e. Easter Island becoming one of the most isolated places on the planet.
Identify the error—fragment or run-on:
we wanted to play soccer however
our friends wanted to listen to music
Identify parts of speech: noun, pronoun (type and case), verb (type and tense), adverb, adjective, preposition,
conjunction (type), gerund, participle, infinitive, article
we
wanted to
play
soccer
however
our
friends
wanted
to listen to music
Identify sentence parts: subject, verb (transitive or intransitive), direct object, indirect object, predicate
nominative, predicate adjective, appositive or appositive phrase, prepositional phrase (adjective or adverb), gerund
phrase, infinitive phrase, participial phrase, object of preposition, object of infinitive, object of gerund, object of
participle, objective complement, subject of infinitive
we
wanted to play
soccer
however
our
friends
wanted
to listen to music
Identify clauses and sentence type: independent, adverb, dependent, adjective dependent, noun dependent;
simple, compound, complex, compound complex
we
wanted to play
soccer
however
our
friends
wanted
to listen to music
Add punctuation and capitalization: end punctuation, commas, semicolons, apostrophes, underlining, quotation
marks
we
wanted to play
soccer
however
our
friends
wanted
to listen to music
Make a practice sentence that mimics this week’s sentence. Be sure to use the same parts of speech and
parts of the sentence.