➲ In the sentence, ‘‘Lorina washed her face,’’ the subject is Lorina, the verb 
is washed, and the group of words makes a complete thought. 
A fragment is a group of words that might lack a subject or a verb and does 
notmake a complete thought. 
➲ ‘‘During the trial’’ is a fragment since there is no subject, verb, or 
complete thought. 
➲‘‘Vicki running next to her sister’’ is another fragment because, though 
it has a subject, (Vicki), and possibly a verb (running), the group of words 
does not make a complete thought. Thus, it is not a sentence. 
➲ The group of words ‘‘After these stray dogs were placed in the pound’’ is 
also a fragment. It has a subject (dogs) and a verb (were placed), but there 
is no complete thought. 
A run-on sentence is two (or more) sentences incorrectly written as a single 
sentence. 
➲ ‘‘The sofa is comfortable, the chair is too’’ is an example of a run-on 
sentence because two complete sentences are incorrectly joined (or 
spliced) by a comma. 
➲ Sometimes run-on sentences have no punctuation at all! An example 
of this is, ‘‘Princeton University is a fine place of higher learning it is 
located in New Jersey.’’ Here, there are really two sentences that have 
been mistakenly joined or spliced into one.
