Here's what The Elements of Style has to say on the matter:
In other words, do not use periods for commas.
I met them on a Cunard liner manye years ago. Coming home from Liverpool to New York.
He was an interesting talker. A man who had traveled all over the world and lived in half a dozen countries.
In both these examples, the first period should be replaced by a comma and the following word begun with a small letter.
It is permissible to make an emphatic word or expression serve serve the purpose of a sentence and to punctuate accordingly:
Again and again he called out. No reply.
The writer must, however, be certain that the emphasis is warranted, lest his clipped sentence seem merely a blunder in syntax or in punctuation. Generally speaking, the place for broken sentences is in dialogue, when a character happens to speak in a clipped or fragmented way.
This is good advice, but the question seems to linger - since 1979 (the year of the edition of the above excerpt), has this viewpoint generally changed? Sentence fragments outside of dialogue seem to be used (if sparingly) in writing rather often today: in novels, in articles, even on the site.
From Smaur's the nine lives of allen grey:
1.
The ninth is a suicide. Again. Jumped off a roof and plummeted to his death.
No relatives, no friends, nothing. They cremate his body and send the ashes to a landfill on Jupiter.
There's no such thing as second chances for suicides.
Fragments. Lots and lots of fragments. I think it reads well as it is. I'm not suggesting that she go through and rewrite the whole thing in fragments (because that would become quickly confusing and difficult to read) but I do think it's a striking beginning. But must it also be considered grammatically incorrect, as my creative writing teacher seems to think? o0
What are your opinions on sentence fragments in fiction?
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