More Excitement! More Action! More Non-Stop Fun! Participial Phrases

Examples We could see the lake and the mountains across the lake on the French side. BOR-ING! Now let’s try a participial phrase… Sitting up in bed eating breakfast, we could see the lake and the mountains across the lake on the French side. -Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms

The sun rose clear and bright. SO? Now let’s try a participial phrase… The sun rose clear and bright, tinging the foamy crests of the waves with a reddish purple. -Alexander Dumas Count of Monte Cristo

Participial Phrases…what’s the big deal? Participial phrases help you add detail and variety to your writing. Participial phrases also allow you to write about two things happening at the same time without using the word “while.” Participial phrases allow you to have greater sentence density.

So what makes a participial phrase? PARTICIPLE: Present Participle: Verb -ing Past Participle: Verb –ed, -en, -d, -t, -n (as in asked, eaten, saved, dealt, and seen) PHRASE: A group of words that acts like a single part of a sentence (ex: a noun, a verb, an adjective, etc.) PARTICIPIAL PHRASE:A participial phrase is a group of words consisting of a participle and the modifier(s) and/or (pro)noun(s) or noun phrase(s) that function as the direct object(s), indirect object(s), or complement(s) of the action or state expressed in the participle

Confused Yet?

Let’s make it simple PARTICIPLE OTHER WORDS RELATED TO THE PARTICPLE PARTICIPIAP L PHRASE!