Complete Sentences

Complete Sentences "Koko, can you proofread this letter to my Nana?" "Sure, let me look." "This is a very nice letter, but I see you are missing some complete sentences!" A sentence is a word or group of words that have a complete thought. Sentences ALWAYS begin with a capital letter and end with punctuation. A complete sentence MUST have a subject and a predicate. The subject of a sentence is the person, place, or thing that is performing the action of the sentence. In the sentence, 'Pip wrote a letter to his Nana', the subject is Pip. The predicate of a sentence tells what the subject is doing or what the subject is. The predicate of this sentence is ' wrote a letter because it tells what Pip did. If a sentence is missing information, like the subject or a predicate, we call it a sentence fragment. We correct sentence fragments by adding the missing information. If a sentence has too much information, we call it a run-on sentence... and correct it by adding punctuation to separate into two independent thoughts... or join the thoughts together with a conjunction. Let's read through Pip's letter and correct the sentence fragments and run-ons. Dear Nana, It's me, Pip! I hope you are doing well! That I miss you. 'That I miss you ' is not a complete thought, so we need to correct it by adding the missing information. We add the subject to the sentence. Since Pip is writing the letter, the subject would be I and we put it here. The predicate is what Pip wanted to do. He wanted to tell his Nana that he missed her, so we'll add the words I wanted to tell you here. The complete sentence says I wanted to tell you that I miss you! Koko and I are living in a treehouse. Koko is my best friend we go everywhere together have so much fun. This is a run-on sentence because there is more than one complete thought that is not connected properly. The first complete thought is 'Koko is my best friend', so we will put punctuation here. Since a new sentence starts here, we now need to capitalize the in we. We go everywhere together AND have so much fun are also two complete thoughts. These two thoughts CAN remain inside the same sentence because they are joined by the conjunction AND. A talented artist and very smart. What does Pip need to do to make this sentence fragment a complete sentence? He needs to add a subject and predicate. Koko is a talented artist and very smart. She is so funny I want to be just like her! How would you correct this run-on sentence? One way to correct this run-on sentence is to add punctuation and make it two different sentences. She is so funny! I want to be just like her! In the comment section, share one of the other ways you could correct this run-on sentence. Write back, Nana! Love, Pip. While Pip sends off his letter, let's review. A sentence is a word or group of words having a complete thought. Sentences begin with a capital letter and end with punctuation. A complete sentence must have a subject and a predicate. If a sentence is missing information, like the subject or a predicate, we call it a sentence fragment. We correct sentence fragments by adding the missing information. If a sentence has too much information, we call it a run-on sentence and correct it by adding punctuation or a conjunction. "Koko, my Nana wrote me back AND sent me a present!" "What is it, Pip?" "Go try it on!" "Look! I look JUST like you!"