Q: Are there exceptions to this “foundational” rule? A: Yes.
Before we move on to Stage 2, where we will explore the possibilities (and rules) regarding using more than one main clause in your sentences, let me point out right now that English grammar allows for several quite-common exceptions to our foundational (and I might even say “dominant“) grammar rule, that a “complete” sentence requires at least one main clause.
For example, I purposely indulged in such an exception in the one-word sentence that answers the question posed in this section’s heading: “Yes.”
These fairly common exceptions occur in different ways (as I will specify), but they usually cause no problem in reader (or listener) comprehension because, in the context of the sentence (what is going on, among the people involved), the “missing” subject or predicate (or both!) is already understood.
In grammar terms we use the term “implied.” We leave out an otherwise required S or P because we know (or at least believe!) that our reader or listener understands, with little room for doubt, the part we’re omitting. That is, the missing element is implied, via our shared context.
We see this grammatical leeway showing clearly in the common sentence type, the “command” (or “order” or “directive”). By any name, we are not making a statement (formally, a “declarative” sentence), nor are we asking a question (the “interrogative” sentence). When we “direct” someone to do something, we are using a third sentence type, formally called the “imperative.”
In class, I would test the students to see who would jump in to answer this question: What is the “subject” in the sentence, “Be sure to lock the door.” Usually a couple hands (out of about 20!) would go up, and some smarty would correctly offer that the missing subject is “the implied you.”
See? We don’t need to specify a subject, when that’s obvious. If I say to you directly, “Lock the door,” you know that I mean you. We needn’t say, “You, lock the door” — since the person I’m talking about — that is, my sentence’s subject — is “implied.” Get it?
Sometimes we omit a subject or predicate since they’re obvious — get it?
Get it? (That sentence shows a similar case of omitted, since obvious, words). See? (So does that one.) I need not include “Do you” (get it?). Nor need I say “Do you” (see?) I ask only “Get it?” or “See?”
In such cases, I can (optionally) omit S or P, since my subject (such as, in an imperative, “you”) is clearly implied (maybe even obvious). Even without stating (instead, simply implying) otherwise “essential” sentence elements, the reader or listener can still understand you just fine. See? (That is, “See what I mean? — but you knew that!)
Along with “imperative” sentences and those with very obvious parts that can be omitted, another type of exception to the “MC required” rule is the fourth (and final) sentence type, the “exclamatory.” This sentence type includes exclamations like “Hooray!” or Wow! or one of my favorites, “Bullshit!” If all we’re doing is exclaiming some reaction, we don’t need a true main clause, though that always remains an option, as in “I call bullshit!”
And there are some other exceptions that rarely get mentioned in grammar books and websites, such as one-word answers to questions, as in, Q: “What time is it?” A: “12:30.”
So, yes, as foundational as I am designating our main rule (sentences need main clauses), there are many possible exceptions. I just want to acknowledge these common and widely accepted exceptions right here, while we’re considering main clauses — that is, while we’re discussing the subject (and not just implying it, ha ha). Get it? (Sorry.)
Sentence fragments: for effect vs. from ignorance
Well, Reader-student, I want you to know that, for the sake of currency — not the monetary kind, the temporal kind — I am constantly researching grammatical “rules and tips,” to see how different sites and authorities (reliable or iffy) are presently presenting the things I put here on my site. It’s not that I am ready to accept (and even promote, here) the latest fad; I’m not. At least not necessarily.
As your personal “interpreter” of the (often contradictory!) grammar “rules, I accept and happily promote some new “developments” in how we write and speak. Others, I reject, though in many cases I will at least inform you of these trends, whether or not I agree with their validity. I advise that you trust my judgments — or at least give them thoughtful consideration — but guess who gets the final say? You guessed it: You do! It’s your voice — and I want it authentically yours!
Actually, I detest some new grammatical “twists” (fairly recent developments that break from tradition), even when I understand that certain “authorities” find them acceptable (or even expected or, worse yet, required). As you might have read elsewhere on this site (maybe in “About Mike” or in my twin-posts with “pronoun madness” in their titles), I see a huge difference in “new twists” that improve our ever-changing language, versus those that dumb it down — that degrade our language — or as my acclaimed, English-teaching grandmother would say, even back in the 1960s, that bastardize our precious (and sometimes confounding) English language. For more on our language’s lack of any universally accepted standard-bearer in English, check out my post with “Whose Rules” in the title.)
Anyway, as pertains to our present topic, “exceptions to our foundational rule” (that every sentence needs at least one main clause), I have above provided a handful of such exceptions that we hear regularly and that offend nobody.
But the next such “exception” — sentence fragments — which I will conditionally promote, comes with a major disclaimer: if you use it at all (as I did just above, in ending the first paragraph in this section (maybe you noticed?), then do your credibility a big favor and use such “frags” sparingly.
I refer to what many grammar sites acknowledge as the “intentional fragment.” This type of fragment makes it into one’s writing not in ignorance, but for effect — that is, for style. Unlike most sentence fragments we see daily (if we read much), these frags were put there on purpose. The writer “knows better” but just, in that spot, likes their sound, their rhythm, their effect.
Boy, oh boy, that’s a big difference — and sometimes a risky one. Very few errors degrade credibility as do sentence fragments, when the reader suspects at all that they arise not from style, but from ignorance. “You can’t even (consistently) put together a complete sentence? Fool!”
So let me clear up when you get to (without risking your credibility) issue those iffy, if incomplete, word groupings. You can present “frags” with little risk of seeming ignorant of our foundational rule (it’s not some obscure thing unknown to most) in two ways — at best, show both of the following “permission slips.”
Secondly, (and this caution is made most everywhere you look, so I take no credit), use fragments sparingly. Now, how shall we clarify this “grey” term? Well, I say that “sparingly” means no more than one per “page.” In these pageless days of internet writing (as you are reading right here), we can ballpark a “page” as about 300 words.
For reference, that “ballpark figure” equates exactly to the chunk of text ending just above at “300 words” and beginning (up a little) with the word “Anyway,” which begins the second paragraph of this blog section. That’s exactly 300 words, which, for decades, many have used as a ballpark estimation of a “page of text” (in 12-point type, double-spaced, with typical margins). Some sources call it 250-300 words, but in my checking of many student papers, 300 (maybe a bit more) is about average.
Now, I just made up that “rule,” myself — and I have told you that I will announce such a thing, when it happens. I’m not “confessing,” I’m proudly asserting myself. You can look all day long (as I did today, and with great interest, not to mention a sense of responsibility), but you won’t find another source that will take such a stand as to put a number to this case of “use sparingly.” That’s why you need me! Yeppers. (By my own standard, I was due for one!) 🙂
Or don’t use fragments at all! That’s not a problem. I’m just saying that, if you do indulge in frags, for “style,” don’t use more than one per “page” — if that many.
Grammatical alchemy — turning “cow manure” into gold!
Allow me to conclude this blog post — on “exceptions” to our main rule — by clarifying why I present my “rule for sentence fragments” in the same post where I, myself, have written of my contempt for rule changes that might go too far, with too little benefit, such that they warrant my grandmother’s scorn as “bastardizing” our language. (Gram would bristle at the permissibility of fragments at all — so call me “liberal” on the matter!)
For reasons that are probably obvious to you, by now, whenever I encounter sentence fragments — especially published in generally reputable places, such as the newspaper I subscribe to and read daily, The Denver Post, I’m a reader who notices.
Yes, but am I so far “gone” that I would take time to count and tabulate them, when they get so miserably distracting that I think I could turn possibly convert that slop into something of value, the way scientists are now trying to making fuel out of literal cow maure, aka bullshit? Indeed, I am that far gone.
So this past week, when reading a Denver Post sports column (please remember, in college I served as not only a sports writer on our school newspaper, but sports editor), I started getting nauseous at the plethora of sentence fragments overused by a writer I normally enjoy, Sean Keeler, for his (for God’s sake, not “their“) knowledge and writing style, both. Why a talented writer would stoop to such pandering to ignorance, I can’t say. But I can say, with specificity, that in a total of 795 words, not counting quoted material (meriting, by my rule, between two and three sentence fragments), Keeler indulged in not 3 frags, not even 13, but 19!
That’s right, and I guess he thinks he’s mega-trendy, but I call bullshit on that horse poop — no offense to either four-legged animal. And I hope to have converted that BS into a lesson for you worth gold. Reader-student, I know you can do better, especially armed with this info. Please do.