College Admission Essay: Grammar - Complete Sentences, Punctuation, and Spelling

Buy this book »

Complete Sentences

English teachers (including yours truly) emphasize complete sentences so strongly that you may think the rule is carved on Mount Rushmore. Prepare yourself for a shock. Yes, it’s true that complete sentences are desirable and the basis for all written English. However, just about everyone, again including yours truly, breaks the rules from time to time. So far, life as we know it on earth hasn’t crumbled from the strain, but stay tuned.

The basic ingredients of a complete sentence are as follows:

• A verb — a word or phrase expressing action or state of being
• A subject — who or what you’re talking about in the sentence
• A thought that makes sense by itself, that’s . . . well, complete.

Here are some examples of complete sentences and incomplete sentence fragments, all from a (non-existent) essay answering the real application question “Describe a situation in which you took a stand that was unpopular with the majority”:

Incomplete fragment: Because I had the guts to defy Mr. Pickle.

Why it’s incomplete: You’ve given a reason, but it’s not attached to any context. True, the context may be clear from the information in other sentences, but this one can’t stand alone.

Complete sentence: I didn’t drop out of chemistry when I was assigned 149 extra laboratory reports as punishment, because I had the guts to defy Mr. Pickle.

Why it’s complete: Now you have a thought that ends in a logical place. Nothing is flapping in the breeze, waiting for more words.

Another fragment: Mr. Pickle, who was overly fond of vinegar and often sang “The Brine Song” at the beginning of class, regardless of how much work we were supposed to accomplish.

Why it’s incomplete: The “who” signals a description, but there’s no main idea — no verb, in grammatical terms — to match with “Mr. Pickle.” The reader has a description but is waiting for the central statement to conclude.

Complete sentence: Mr. Pickle was overly fond of vinegar and often sang “The Brine Song” at the beginning of class, regardless of how much work we were supposed to accomplish.

Why it’s complete: When you extract the “who,” the reader stays on one track. The verb “was” matches “Mr. Pickle.” The meaning comes across as finished.

Another complete sentence: Mr. Pickle, who was overly fond of vinegar and often sang “The Brine Song” at the beginning of class, regardless of how much work we were supposed to accomplish, eventually drowned in a vat of cucumber salad.

Why this one’s complete: Now when the “who . . . accomplish” description is extracted, a complete thought remains: “Mr. Pickle eventually drowned in a vat of cucumber salad.”

One more thing about complete sentences: Don’t stick two of them together without any glue. The “glue” in Grammar World is a joining word (and, or, nor, but, for, yet, because, since, after, although, and so on) or a semicolon (;). If you attach one complete sentence to another, be sure you’ve got one of those “glue” words, also known as conjunctions. Some examples:

Illegal joining: I told the class that Mr. Pickle’s plan was immoral, the class didn’t listen to me.