In English grammar, a sentence fragment is a group of words that begins with a capital letter and ends with a period, question mark, or exclamation point but is grammatically incomplete.

Put simply, a sentence fragment is a clause that falls short of a complete because it is missing one of three critical components: a subject, a verb, and a complete thought.

A sentence fragment is a phrase or clause written as a sentence but lacking an element, as a subject or verb, that would enable it to function as an independent sentence in normative written English.

A sentence fragment is a group of words that looks like a sentence, but actually isn’t a complete sentence. Sentence fragments are usually missing a subject or verb, or they do not express a complete thought. While it may be punctuated to look like a complete sentence, a fragment cannot stand on its own.