Phrases
Much like in daily conversations you have with friends, family, or colleagues, phrases are used in academic studies to enrich and provide variety to formal writing. Phrases are small groupings of words that function as a part of a sentence, like a verb, adjective, or noun. Even though a phrase might contain a subject and a verb, in relation to the other words in the sentence, that particular group of words may be modifying or describing another word in the main sentence.
Example: Running through the forest, Katniss avoided the other tributes.
In the example above, the phrase has a verb and a noun but it cannot stand alone since it is missing a subject. This phrase is meant to add more detail to the subject, so the whole phrase acts like an adjective. Below you will find some of the most common kinds of phrases used in academic writing, but there are many kinds of phrases to choose from.
Participial Phrases
Participial phrases add descriptions to nouns and pronouns in your writing because they function as adjectives even though they resemble actions.
Example One
Example Two
Absolute Phrases
The absolute construction resembles the participial phrase and includes a noun (person, place, thing, or idea) and a participle (a word that looks like an action ending in –ed or –ing in most cases, but a participle is actually an adjective describing a noun).
Example One
Example Two
Appositive Phrases
An appositive phrase adds details to other nouns. The difference between an appositive phrase and a participial phrase is that an appositive also functions as a noun; therefore, an appositive phrase frequently begins with “a, an, or the.”
Example One
Example Two