Use fragments for rhetorical effect

Should you use fragments in your writing? Your high school English teacher almost certainly said “No!” and marked it with a red pen.

Fragments are okay if they serve a rhetorical effect, such as when creating suspense. For example: She realized something was behind her. Something large. Something breathing heavily.

Still, fragments should be used rarely. For a rhetorical effect to be successful, it needs to stand out from the rest of the text.

Fragments need revising if they don’t really serve this effect or if they are confusing to understand because they aren’t a complete sentence.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past decade, I’ve helped more than 300 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

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