“How did I escape? With difficulty. How did I plan this moment? With pleasure. ”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
I recently found out that when writing lists, items in a list don't have to be complete sentences, like "You might write to: Inform".
After this writer utilizes a question mark, it seems to get written, "With difficulty". That's not a sentence. Maybe I don't get how sentences utilize a subject, a verb, and an object. Some writers don't seem to utilize this. I don't think I understand. When can I write a complete sentence or not, when some writers seem to write things like this?
Is he writing with respect to what he formerly wrote? May these things get specified as fragments? May writers utilize fragments? Why are fragments sometimes utilized, sometimes not?
Answer
There's no rule that utterances have to be complete sentences. What they have to do is communicate.
Alice: How did you escape?
Bob:I escapedwith difficulty.
Bob doesn't need to say I escaped here. Alice already knows she's asking about how Bob escaped. It's obvious from context.
But what about this conversation?
Alice: Hello!
Bob: #With difficulty.
Now Bob isn't making any sense. If Bob wanted to say that he escaped with difficulty, he'd have to use a complete sentence:
Alice: Hello!
Bob: I escaped with difficulty.
He has to use a complete sentence because there's no context to allow the fragment as an answer. The fragment doesn't make sense here; Alice needs to know what Bob did with difficulty.
In your example, the author is engaging in hypophora – asking and answering his own questions:
How did I escape?
I escapedwith difficulty.
How did I plan this moment?I planned this momentwith pleasure.
It doesn't matter that it's in a list. It'd be fine with just one question and answer. The repetition is pleasing to the ear, though.
In this answer, the # symbol means "This utterance doesn't make sense in this context."
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