Allowing Sentence Fragments

Maggie notes that in fiction writing it is acceptable to have sentence fragments within dialogue, as that is how we often speak. This makes her wonder if there is a way to set Word's automatic grammar checker to not flag sentence fragments that occur between quotation marks.

You can, if you'd like, configure the grammar checker so that it does not flag sentence fragments. Follow these steps:

1. Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In later versions display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
2. Click the Proofing option at the left side of the dialog box. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Proofing options of the Word Options dialog box.

3. Click the Settings button. (This button is toward the bottom of the dialog box.) Word displays the Grammar Settings dialog box. (See Figure 2.)



Figure 2. The Grammar Settings dialog box.

4. Clear the Sentence Fragment check box.
5. Make any other settings adjustments you'd like.
6. Click on OK to close the Grammar Settings dialog box.
7. Click on OK to close the Word Options dialog box.

It should be noted that Microsoft is notorious for changing the checkboxes available in Grammar Settings dialog box from one version of Word to another. Thus, you may not be able to find a "Sentence Fragment" option in step 4. If you dig around in the options, though, you may find a differently worded option that does the same thing. For instance, in some versions of Word you may find a "Fragments and Run-ons" option that does essentially the same thing as the "Sentence Fragment" option.

Note, as well, that if you clear this option, Word will ignore all sentence fragments, regardless of where they occur—between quotation marks or not. If this is unacceptable for your purposes, you may want to try a different approach. If it suits your writing (if you don't have that many fragments), you might consider prefacing them with ellipses. Word magically ignores a fragment that has ellipses in from of it.

Another option is to define a new character style that you use just for your in-dialogue fragments. Define the style so that it doesn't do grammar checking, and then apply it to the fragments. This has the added benefit of allowing Word to flag any out-of-dialogue fragments that may exist in your prose.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (6209) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Allowing Sentence Fragments.