| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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1. Grammar: Traditional Rules, Word Order, Agreement, and Case
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| § 1. absolute constructions |
Absolute constructions consist of a noun and some kind of modifier, the most common being a participle. Because they often come at the beginning of a sentence, they are easily confused with dangling participles. But an absolute construction modifies the rest of the sentence, not the subject of the sentence (as a participial phrase does). You can use absolute constructions to compress two sentences into one and to vary sentence structure as a means of holding a reader’s interest. Here are some examples:
| | No other business arising, the meeting was adjourned. |
| | The paint now dry, we brought the furniture out on the deck. |
| | The truck finally loaded, they said goodbye to their neighbors and drove off. |
| | The horse loped across the yard, her foal trailing behind her. |
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Constructions like these are used more often in writing than in speaking, where it is more common to use a full clause: When the paint was dry, we brought the furniture out on the deck. There are, however, many fixed absolute constructions that occur frequently in speech:
| | The picnic is scheduled for Saturday, weather permitting. |
| | Barring bad weather, we plan to go to the beach tomorrow. |
| | All things considered, it’s not a bad idea. |
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| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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