Ed,
   I had to laugh because I read this just after responding to an email 
in the following way: "Good news. Thanks. Happy to be both appreciated 
and useful."
   He has since written back "Yes, sir."
   The gist of his first email was that a check is coming, with an 
appreciative comment about the services.
   I should have a subscription to English Journal. For some reason I 
missed this one. I'll be sure to check it out.
   My students have more of a tendency to write run-ons than fragments. 
I'm not sure why. Quite often they take the form of two independent 
clauses making the same point, as in "She was my most trusted friend, I 
could always count on her."

Craig

Edgar Schuster wrote:
> Craig,
>    Oh, the writers used fragments to good purpose, you can be sure of 
> that.  And you're right on target when you talk about "functional 
> reasons" for fragments.
>    My study was published in English Journal, May 2006, entitled "A 
> Fresh Look at Sentence Fragments."
>    (Based on what I have studied, run-ons are rather less frequent, at 
> least in American English.  They appear to be much more frequently 
> used in UK.)
>    Best wishes on your new work,
>
> Ed
>
> On Sep 21, 2009, at 10:14 PM, Craig Hancock wrote:
>
>> Ed,
>>   I'm still not sure whether a fragment is a sub-category of sentence or
>> not. With my students, I use the term "disparaged type" for both
>> fragments and run-ons. I suspect the writers in question used them
>> quite effectively, that they were not just careless choices. If you
>> think of the sentence as a message unit, then isolating a fragment can
>> slow the reader down. Add emphasis. There are functional reasons for
>> it.
>>   Elliptical constructions create definition problems for sure because
>> their completeness depends on context. "Do first year students miss
>> home? Most will."
>>
>> Craig>
>>
>> Craig,
>>>
>>> Anyone who uses that second "definition" will be calling one heck of a
>>> lot of fragments sentences.  In my research of all the essays
>>> published in "Best American Essays" of 2001 and 2003, I found that
>>> about ten percent of all units that began with a capital letter and
>>> ended with a period were fragments.  And I did NOT count and dialog,
>>> any imperatives, or any "verb understood" constructions  (e.g., "He
>>> would if he could.")  Had I counted these, the number of fragments
>>> would have been considerably higher.  As I recall, of the 50 or so
>>> authors represented, only four did not use fragments.
>>>
>>> Ed S
>>>
>>> On Sep 21, 2009, at 1:02 PM, Craig Hancock wrote:
>>>
>>>>  I'm working on a project that starts with a critique of current
>>>> (school based) descriptions and definitions of the sentence, but it
>>>> occurs to me that I may be unaware of practices in other parts of
>>>> the country.
>>>> The most prevalent definition I run into from students starting
>>>> college in New York state is "a sentence is a group of words that
>>>> expresses a complete thought". This is echoed in "Writing Talk", 5th
>>>> edition, 2009, Winkler and McCuen-Metherell, (just sent me by a
>>>> publisher, so I'm using it as a representative text for college
>>>> level) who follow that up with "This completeness is what your
>>>> speaker's ear uses to recognize a sentence" (p. 49), which fairly
>>>> nicely frames the approach--not a full description of the sentence,
>>>> but an attempt to awaken the student writers' intuitive feel for
>>>> minimally necessary forms.
>>>> The other definition/description I get is that "a sentence is a
>>>> group of words that begins with a capital letter and ends with a
>>>> period, question mark, or exclamation point", which would seem to
>>>> grant the writer discretion in deciding what constitutes a sentence
>>>> (complete thought or not.)
>>>>  The point I'm trying to make (at least at the start) is that these
>>>> approaches have limited utility and may be deeply misleading for
>>>> anyone hoping to push toward a deeper understanding.
>>>> But am I missing something? Are any of you aware of school based
>>>> approaches that take a different tack?
>>>>
>>>> Craig
>>>>
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>>>
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>>
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