•••••Run! Jump! No, these are complete sentences with the subject 'you' unspoken.
•••••No! Really? Disgusting! What a creep! Yes, these are not sentences. They are interjections and make sense only if you have a context such as an on-going conversation:
•••••"My sister is getting married," I revealed.
•••••"No!" exclaimed my best friend. "Really? To whom?"
•••••"To my old boy-friend."
•••••"Get outta here. Disgusting! What a creep!"
•••••"I don't care. I think they deserve one another."
•••••on the wagon, over the moon, of all, These are prepositional phrases. A prepositional phrase starts with a preposition and ends with a noun.
•••••Paul is on the wagon now. "Jumping on the water wagon" means not drinking alcohol. It's from the early days of Prohibition when water wagon were used as speaking platforms.
•••••Annie is over the moon. Annie is so happy that her spirits are as high as the moon or more.
•••••Their daughter, Jill, is happiest of all of them.
•••••flicking their fans, caught on a bus These are participial phrases. A participial phrase starts with a participle and includes its object, complement or modifier. A participle is a verbal that is actins as an adjective.
•••••Flicking their fans, the Spanish girls showed their interest or disinterest.
•••••Caught on a bush, the tufts of wool looked like cotton bolls.
•••••flicking their fans, getting stuck These are gerundial phrases. A gerundial phrase starts with a gerund and includes its object, complement or modifier. A gerund is a verbal ending in 'ing' that is acting as a noun.
•••••Spanish girls showed their interest or disinterest by flicking their fans.
•••••Getting stuck fast on a bush is one way to attract the shepherd's attention.
•••••Babies want to learn all the grown-up skills like blowing bubbles.
•••••to flick their fans, to blow bubbles These are infinitive phrases. An infinitive phrase starts with a participle and includes its object, complement or modifier. The infinitive is the name of the verb and it acts as a noun.
•••••Spanish girls use a practised wrist action to flick their fans.
•••••Carmen will show us how to flick a fan.
•••••Babies want to blow bubbles.
•••••what a fan flick means, when I grow up, because they are older These are subordinate clauses. They are little sentences within a complex sentence.
•••••Spanish girls learn from their mothers and sisters what a fan flick means.
•••••When I grow up, I will blow BIG bubbles.
•••••Adults are more skilled because they have practised not because they are older.
•••••Because they are more practised, adults are more skilled not because they are older.
The point of this exercise is to show you that phrases and clauses may be set off by commas, but they are not punctuated as sentences with capitals and end stops on their own.
When your Grade 5 teacher said "Never start a sentence with 'because'.", it was because she wanted to avoid those non-sentence answers such as "because he was crazy" or "because I am smarter". She wanted you to practise writing complete sentences so that you would make better stories and essays.
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