COMPUTER SYSTEMS RESEARCH
Elements of Technical Writing
2005-2006

  • Avoid sentence fragments
    1. A complete declarative sentence must contain a subject and a verb. Without these, the sentence is actually a sentence fragment. 
        As we said lasst Friday during our meeting.

  All of the people who wrote the report during the meeting.
    2. Just because a 'sentence' is long, doesn't mean it must be a sentence. This is also a sentence fragment: 
        Maxwell's remarkable discovery that the speed of propagation of electromagnetic effects is precisely the same s the speed of light in the same medium.