Full sentences are usually required. Each sentence must typically have at least a subject and a verb.
Complete sentences — that is, sentences containing at least a subject and a verb — are required. A full sentence is not something that starts with a capital letter and ends with a period or full stop. The following are examples of incomplete sentences that have been found, at one time or another, on the wiki:
Correct | Incorrect |
---|---|
An Unearthly Child was first broadcast on 23 November 1963. | An Unearthly Child first broadcast. |
David Tennant's future father-in-law, Peter Davison, co-starred alongside Tennant in TV: Time Crash. | David Tennant's future father-in-law, Peter Davison. |
The 34th issue of Doctor Who Adventures was current in the fortnight beginning 19 July 2007. ["34th issue of Doctor Who Adventures" is bolded in this case as it's the lead to DWA 34.] |
The 34th issue of the BBC's fortnightly Doctor Who Adventures. |
Exceptions to this rule are few.
- If you are directly quoting, and the original quotation is a sentence fragment, and you indicate that you are quoting, you may reproduce it.
- If you are making a simple list of words or titles, a complete sentence is not necessary on each line, because the list is likely to be a part of a preceding full sentence. For instance, if you said,
- William Hartnell appeared in the following serials:
- and then proceeded to give a list of those serials, the list is effectively a dependent clause of prepositional phrase "in the following serials". You therefore don't need a full sentence on each line of the list.