I'm working my way through a book of interviews with authors, most of whom are well known. One comment stuck with me: You successfully break the rules by following other rules.
The example s/he gave was similar to this one. "I'm going out. Alone. To meet the love of my life."
Technically, sentence fragments are ungrammatical because they lack parts of a complete sentence: the subject, verb, or the object. The unspoken rule that makes the above paragraph workable is: Combine the fragments with several others, to make a whole expression.
We could merge the fragments into one sentence by re-punctuating them. But the paragraph works because we introduce the subject and verb in the first sentence, and so they can be understood in the trailing phrases.
The paragraph works better than the combined sentence because its choppy nature suggests the bouncy joy of the person saying it. So it's ungrammatical but correct.
What are some of the ways you break rules?
The example s/he gave was similar to this one. "I'm going out. Alone. To meet the love of my life."
Technically, sentence fragments are ungrammatical because they lack parts of a complete sentence: the subject, verb, or the object. The unspoken rule that makes the above paragraph workable is: Combine the fragments with several others, to make a whole expression.
We could merge the fragments into one sentence by re-punctuating them. But the paragraph works because we introduce the subject and verb in the first sentence, and so they can be understood in the trailing phrases.
The paragraph works better than the combined sentence because its choppy nature suggests the bouncy joy of the person saying it. So it's ungrammatical but correct.
What are some of the ways you break rules?