Download The Five Favourite Errors Incomplete sentences

La Trobe University
Academic Language and Learning (ALL) Unit
www.latrobe.edu.au/learning
The Five Favourite Errors
Incomplete sentences:
Example: Few African-Americans turned out to vote. Being intimidated by the Klan.
The second sentence here is incomplete, because it doesn’t tell us who was intimidated. Of
course we know who it was, because we’ve read the sentence before. But each sentence in
formal writing should be complete in itself.
To be complete, a sentence needs this information:
Someone/thing
is/does something
subject
e.g. Elvis Presley
verb
sings.
If you write a sentence that’s not complete, you can solve the problem either by sticking it
together with a neighbouring one that completes it:
Few African-Americans turned out to vote, being intimidated by the Klan.
Or by adding whatever is needed to make it complete:
Few African-Americans turned out to vote. They were intimidated by the Klan.
Another way of being incomplete: Some sentences have a subject and verb, but are
incomplete because they start with a word that is supposed to join two pieces into a single
sentence.
Whereas the White turnout was high.
There’s a set of words for joining, and another set for starting a new sentence. Their
meanings are the same but their function is different; you’re just going to have to memorise
which are which:
For joining two parts of a sentence:
Which
When
Where
Whereas
While (contrast)
While (time)
So
But
Although / though
And
Because
For starting a separate sentence:
This
Then
There
On the other hand / by contrast
On the other hand / by contrast
At the same time
Therefore
However
However
Moreover / furthermore / in addition / also
This is because
To correct that incomplete sentence above, you could choose a suitable starter from the
second column:
On the other hand, the White turnout was high.
A Tip For You: Try putting this first: “It is true that….” If this doesn’t make sense, your
sentence is incomplete.
(e.g., “It is true that being intimidated by the Klan.” Eh?)
Run-on sentences
This is when two possible sentences run together:
Few African-Americans turned out to vote, they were intimidated by the Klan.
To fix this sentence, you could:
Separate them:
Few African-Americans turned out to vote. They were intimidated by the Klan.
Or
Join them with a suitable word (e.g. “because”):
Few African-Americans turned out to vote, because they were intimidated by the Klan.
Or
Join them with a semicolon (;):
Few African-Americans turned out to vote; they were intimidated by the Klan.
When the first part is general and the second more specific about that, you can join them with
a colon:
Few African-Americans turned out to vote: only 1% of those who were eligible voted.
(“few” is general, “1%” more specific. The specifics may be explaining, identifying,
defining, giving an example – often in a quotation, which is why quotes are often introduced
with a colon. )
Commas

for separating chunks within a sentence

the core information – who’s doing what – is the main chunk. Don’t separate subject
from verb with a comma.
(For example, this is wrong: “Few African-Americans, turned out to vote.”)

any stuff before that core information, separate with a comma:
Having been intimidated by the Klan, few African-Americans turned out to vote.

any stuff interrupting that core information, fence off with commas at both ends:
Few African-Americans, after threats by the Klan, turned out to vote.
Agreement
If the subject is singular, the verb has to be singular to match.
This is an issue only with “is/are” and “was/were”, or in the general present tense (one person
votes; two people vote), because other tenses don’t have different forms for singular and
plural verbs (e.g., in the past tense, one person voted, two people voted – no difference):
A voter (singular) is sometimes open to persuasion.
Voters (plural) are sometimes open to persuasion.
When people get this wrong, it’s often because there are a lot of other words between the
subject and verb,
e.g. “Many African-Americans, after threats by the Klan, was intimidated”.
That’s wrong because it’s not the Klan that was intimidated, it’s the African-Americans – so
it should be
“Many African-Americans, after threats by the Klan, were intimidated”.
A common problem in Politics essays is deciding whether a group noun is singular or plural.
For example, “party”, “government”, “movement”, “senate”, etc – each contains a lot of
people, but the word itself is singular. So you should refer to the government (or any group)
as “it”, not “they”, and when it’s the subject of a verb, the verb should be singular, not plural:
The government makes decisions on foreign policy.
Apostrophes:
The ’s ending is needed when a word is possessive, that is, it “owns” the next thing along in
the sentence
e.g., the choice of a voter = a voter’s choice.
To see if you need it, try rephrasing the sentence using “of”, as in that example. If that
doesn’t make sense, it isn’t possessive. For example,
“The voter’s are angry” is wrong because there’s nothing after the voters that
belongs to them.
The “s” is there only to make the plural of “voter”.
Why do you sometimes see an apostrophe before the final “s”, and sometimes after it?
The apostrophe goes on the end of the word. If the word already ends in “s” (usually because
it’s plural), don’t add another “s” after the apostrophe (it would be logical, but often hard to
pronounce – “the parties’s decisions” --, so apart from a few exceptions, it’s fallen out of
use). If there’s no “s” already, then add it.
Example: A voter’s choice is largely predictable. (the choice of one voter)
Voters’ choices are largely predictable. (the choices of more than one voter)
An irritating exception: “Its” is possessive, but it doesn’t take an apostrophe!
(like my, our, your, his, her, their; its= belonging to it)
A party selects its candidate.