Contributor: Delaine Thomas. Lesson ID: 12621
If your sentences are short and dull, you can add a lot of words to them, but they should add to the sense of the sentence. Don't pollute the stream of your writing; keep fresh with these verb forms!
When you write, you want your sentences to flow like a river. They can build in intensity like the rapids over the rocks but try to keep them flowing smoothly.
You can do this if you know how to use good writing strategies!
One of these strategies is to use participial phrases to expand your sentences.
Watch the following video to find out!
A participle is a verb used as an adjective in a sentence.
A participial phrase contains the participle and any modifiers that go with it.
A participial phrase may come before the noun it modifies
Dedicated to his task, their teacher tried to help them.
Or, it may come after the noun.
The students, studying the lesson carefully, tried to understand the purpose of the Civil War.
You may have noticed that the participial phrase is separated from the sentence with commas. That's important because it is not a necessary part of the sentence but is there to provide more information.
Remember, a participial phrase begins with a verb form that ends in -ed or -ing and comes before or after the noun it modifies.
Head over to the Got It? section!