Things that Give Writers Fits

Sentence formation

Saying “a sentence has a subject and a verb” just doesn’t work sometimes. Many writers who’ve had this rule pounded into their heads still routinely churn out sentence fragments.
So maybe this is a better way to understand it. Read these aloud:

The book on the shelf.
While we ate dinner.
Because the cat ate the mouse.
Angry about the flag.

Any sentences there? If you say, yes, then we’ve got some work to do.

Go back to the “sentences” and tell me what the book is about, what happened while you ate dinner, what happened because the cat ate the mouse, and what did someone do because he or she was angry about the flag. When you can give me all of that information, you’ve got four sentences. Until then, you’ve just got four useless, confusing sentence fragments that, really, don’t mean much.