If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.
—Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life
While mastery of sentence kernels is an essential writing skill, limiting your sentence-making to kernels alone will probably bore both you and your readers. If you imagine that creating a basic kernel sentence structure is like building a small, plain house, then elaborating that structure is like adding details and decoration to that house. The kernel sentence, just like the unadorned house, does the essential work it needs to do; the act of adding details and decoration, to either sentence structure or house structure, can move both of them beyond the basic. In both cases, though, you need to know how to elaborate the elemental structure so that your additions enhance that structure rather than detract from the work it already does well.
The techniques of making more complex sentences are all based on the process of adding to basic sentences. To write a sentence that is more complex is to add more “stuff”—more information, more details, more words—to a basic sentence. Many writers get into trouble when they try to construct complicated sentences because they lose track of the basic sentence pattern. If you keep a firm grip on that pattern (or one of its variations), you’re less likely to lose your way (and to lose your readers).
The techniques of making complicated sentences fall into two main categories:
Skilled writers make use of both of these techniques, both separately and together. In this chapter, we’ll explore elaboration; in Chapter 12, we’ll turn to extending sentences.
When we want to add more material to a kernel, we have to keep in mind two things. First, readers expect the basic sentence pattern to provide a foundation for every declarative sentence, so we don’t want to thwart that expectation unless we’re doing it on purpose and for good reason. In other words, we have to make sure that when we elaborate a kernel we don’t mess up the basic kernel structure. We need to add our material to sentences in ways that don’t confuse our readers—unless we have some good reason for wanting to disorient them. We need to make sure that when we add more material to a kernel, our sentences still make sense.
Second, elaborating kernels is one of our most useful tools for making things happen inside our readers’ minds and for keeping their attention. When we learn how to add material to kernels, we have unlimited options for creating the effects we want.
There are two primary ways we can elaborate kernels: We can create compound subjects or verbs; and we can add modifiers to the subject or the predicate, or both. Some of these techniques will be familiar to you from the chapter on phrases. Here, we’ll go over them again—this time thinking about them a little differently, from the point of view of elaborating kernels. Then we’ll examine some other techniques.
You’ll remember that we can combine two or more nouns (or noun phrases) using the conjunction and. When this construction serves as the subject of a sentence, the result is called a compound subject. For example:
The Sharks and the Jets eyed each other with suspicion.
Joe and Mary have never met.
We can also use and to combine verbs. When two or more verbs (or verb phrases) serve as the predicate of a sentence, they are called a compound predicate. For example:
Joe opened the window and looked out.
The dog barked at the postman and growled fiercely.
Sometimes compound subjects or predicates take the form of a list:
Joe jumped out of bed, grabbed his clothes, and dressed hurriedly.
If you vaguely remember something called “compound sentences” from a grammar lesson, please note that there is a big difference between a compound predicate and a compound sentence: a sentence with a compound predicate has only one subject (though that subject may contain more than one noun). If you feel confused about this, read over the sentences above and pause after the subject, then notice how it’s the same subject engaging in every one of the actions conveyed by the verbs. As for compound sentences, we’ll get to them in the next chapter.
Write some short sentences using compound subjects and predicates (or both). What do you notice?
You probably remember that a predicate can often contain more than one “slot”; when it does, the constructions in those slots can also become compound. (See Chapter 10 for an explanation of slots.) For example:
Joe threw the apples and oranges into a bag. (Compound direct object)
Mary gave Steve and Suzanne a list of tasks to do. (Compound indirect object)
Mary is a liar and a thief. (Compound complement)
Play around with using the compounding technique with these constructions. As you do this, keep in mind that whenever you join two words or phrases with and, those constructions must be the same part of speech; that is, you must join nouns and nouns, adjectives and adjectives, but not nouns and adjectives.
Compound structures are a useful tool, one that enables writers to condense a great deal of information into a single sentence. For example:
"All the frustration and bitterness and fascination of the years I spent [in Moscow] during the war came rushing back at me …"
—Andrew Garve, Murder Through the Looking Glass
By seven o’clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
The Rat brought the boat alongside the bank, made her fast, helped the still awkward Mole safely ashore, and swung out the luncheon-basket.
—Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
Compound predicates also enable writers to infuse their sentences with the energy of activity:
He threw his head down and gnashed his teeth, and allowed a murmur of suppressed anger to sweep the crowd.
—Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
The skipping-rope was a wonderful thing. [Mary] counted and skipped, and skipped and counted, until her cheeks were quite red …
—Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
Search the work of one of your favorite writers for compound subjects, verbs, direct objects, and other structures, then imitate those sentences.
What do you notice in doing these practices?
The second way we can elaborate a kernel is by adding modifiers. As you undoubtedly remember, a modifier is a word, or a group of words, that adds some information to a noun or a verb; a modifier makes its noun or verb more specific, more precise, more vivid. When a word or a group of words modifies a noun, it is functioning as an adjective. When a word or a group of words modifies a verb (or, sometimes, an adjective or another adverb), it is functioning as an adverb.
Any noun or noun phrase can have modifying words added to it; so can any verb or verb phrase, including verbals.
When we come to elaborate our kernels with modifiers there are two main things we have to pay attention to. First, within the limits imposed by the need to make sense, we can make choices about what material we want to add; second, we can make choices about when we want to add that material.
There are three verbal structures we can use as modifiers: single content words, phrases, and clauses. For the time being, let’s focus on the first two. (We’ll get to clauses later.) You’ll remember this material from the practices on making phrases; I want you to revisit it here so you can focus on modification as a technique for elaborating kernels.
When a noun is modified by a single word, most of the time that word comes between the determiner and the noun:
The boy laughed.
The small boy laughed.
The small, timid boy laughed.
The dog was a long-eared, friendly mutt.
Single adjectives in between a determiner and a noun can be combined with and:
The dog was a long-eared and short-haired mutt.
Anytime you put a noun into an appropriate place in a sentence—as, for instance, object or complement—you can, if you like, add modifiers:
The small boy reached out with timid fingers to pat the long-eared, friendly mutt.
Like nouns, verbs can (and often are) modified by single words—in this case, adverbs:
The small boy walked softly.
Write some kernels. Now rewrite them, adding single-word modifiers to the nouns. What do you notice? (Of course, adding an adjective or two in between a determiner and a noun makes the noun phrase longer. Do you like the sound of longer noun phrases?)
Write some kernels. Now rewrite them, adding single-word modifiers to the verbs.
What do you notice? If you like, try writing kernels and then adding single-word modifiers to both nouns and verbs.
One of the most important things to know about modifiers is that they can be single words—or they can be phrases. For instance:
The boy laughed.
The small boy in the blue hat laughed loudly at the clown. (The modifiers, in order: single adjective; prepositional phrase acting as an adjective; single adverb; prepositional phrase acting as an adverb.)
Write some kernels, then elaborate them with adjectival or adverbial phrases. Use these two phrase patterns: 1) two adjectives or two adverbs connected by and; 2) prepositional phrases.
Read your sentences out loud: How do they sound to you? What do you notice doing this? (If you struggle with this practice, you may want to review Chapter 9.)
Now experiment with taking a kernel and modifying it, first, with single words, then with phrases, then with both single words and phrases. What do you notice?
Tears rolled slowly down Mrs. Packington's middle-aged cheeks.
—Agatha Christie, “The Case of the Middle-Aged Wife”
Note the single modifiers: slowly (modifying rolled), Mrs. Packington’s and middle-aged (both modifying cheeks), and the phrase down Mrs. Packington’s middle-aged cheeks (modifying rolled).
The house had roughcast walls and a roof of mossy stone tiles and stood at the far end of the farmyard in the shade of an old Scots pine.
—Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill
Mary touched [the branch of the tree] in an eager, reverent way.
—Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
Just then they heard the intimate, dramatic, triumphant, wheedling voice of the radio …
—Nadine Gordimer, “The Gentle Art”
Use the sentences above, or choose a passage from a writer of your choice. First, identify the kernel of each declarative sentence. Notice what kind of modifiers the writer used: single words or phrases. Now imitate each sentence by writing a kernel and then using modifiers in the same way as the professional writer did; in other words, place single modifiers and modifying phrases exactly where she did. Read your sentences aloud. What do you notice?
One of the things you’ll probably notice is that single word modifiers are often a part of prepositional phrases, as in of an old Scots pine, where old and Scots modify pine. You may also find the writer using structures that you can’t yet identify; just set these aside, for now.
In addition to using single words and prepositional phrases as modifiers, we can also use participial phrases. You’ll remember from our discussion of verbals in Chapter 8 that we have two participial forms of verbs that we can use as modifiers: the present participle (which commonly ends in -ing), and the past participle (which often, though not always, ends in -ed). It’s essential to be aware of the difference between a participle that is taking the role of main verb in a sentence—Stephen was singing loudly in the car—and a participle used as an adverb or adjective—Stephen listened to the singing bird. In the example from Nadine Gordimer, the word wheedling is a participle serving as an adjective. (If you feel confused about participles, review Chapter 8 or consult your grammar book.) Here we will talk only about participles used as modifiers.
Like other modifiers, participles can be inserted into an existing phrase, as the word “singing” is into the noun phrase “the bird” in the above example; they can also have other words added to them and become participial phrases. For example:
We listened for a long time to the sparrows chirping in the trees.
Participles can be confusing because they are very adaptable and can do a number of different things in sentences. To make sure you know what a participle is doing in a particular sentence, try this: First identify the single parts of speech and the phrases in the sentence, and name the role each is playing. This will show you that, in a sentence like this one, for instance—Joe hit the barking dog—the phrase the barking dog has a participle (barking) in it, but it’s not a participial phrase (an adjective construction) because it’s functioning as a direct object and so must be a noun phrase.
… the lines of trembling monkeys huddled together on the walls and battlements looked like ragged shaky fringes of things.
—Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book
They had left him, and now they were going to bed. Uncle Alan took a bath, and Tom lay listening to him and hating him.
—Philippa Pearce, Tom’s Midnight Garden
[He] had dwindled now simply into a nice-looking young man standing in the sunshine, with doubt melting on his face into horrified apology.
—Mary Stewart, The Ivy Tree
Find examples of participles or participial phrases in a passage by your favorite writer, or use the examples above. Imitate how your chosen writer uses these structures as modifiers. What do you notice? Then invent some sentences of your own, using these structures.
When we elaborate a kernel, we need to remember that sentences unfold for readers in time: To make sense of what they are reading, readers add each element in a sentence to the one that came before it. So one of the keys to successful elaboration lies in knowing when in a kernel we can add modifiers.
We have three choices:
If you skipped the section on slots (it’s in Chapter 10), all you need to know here is that a declarative sentence has two main parts—the subject and the predicate—and that each of these can be considered as a syntactic “slot” into which we slide words.
Suppose we have a basic sentence kernel like, The dog barks. We’ve got a subject, The dog, and a predicate, barks.
This sentence communicates something … but perhaps it doesn’t get across all the details we’d like to include. As we saw above, we can add modifiers within the noun phrase “the dog": The little brown dog barks.
Suppose we still want to add more information to our subject, the little brown dog. We can do that by adding more modifiers within the subject slot:
The little brown dog with the injured foot / barks.
In general, when we add modifiers to a noun, single adjectives come between the determiner and the noun; adjective phrases come after the noun.
If we want to, we can also add single words or phrases, as adverbs, to the predicate slot:
The little brown dog with the injured foot / barks loudly.
The little brown dog with the injured foot / barks loudly until dusk.
You just did this practice above; nonetheless, I encourage you to do it again. This time, though, as you do it, be aware that you are sliding your words into sentence “slots.”
Write a kernel, then add single words or phrases—only prepositional phrases, for now—or both, to the subject or the predicate slots, or both. Try to pay attention to the boundary between the subject and the predicate slots.
When we add modifiers within a syntactic slot—that is, to the subject or predicate of the sentence—those modifiers are known as bound modifiers. They are called “bound” because they are fixed in place in a sentence; they cannot typically be placed elsewhere in the sentence without distorting its meaning.
You probably remember from Chapter 10 that, depending on the verb being used, the predicate slot can often contain one or two slots in addition to the one containing the main verb. Each one of these slots can also be elaborated with bound modifiers. For instance, here’s a kernel:
Joe gave Jenny a bracelet.
Now here’s the kernel with elaboration in the fourth slot:
Joe// gave/ Jenny/ a silver bracelet from his grandmother’s jewelry case.
In this second version the fourth slot contains the direct object, “bracelet,” which is modified in two ways: with the single adjective silver inserted into the noun phrase (a bracelet) and with the prepositional phrase (from his grandmother’s jewelry case) placed after the noun phrase, a silver bracelet.
Like prepositional phrases, participial phrases can be bound modifiers, as in this example: He was a timid man hiding behind a brave smile. (Hiding behind a brave smile is an adjective phrase modifying man.)
Write some kernel sentences making use of two, three, or four slots. Then elaborate each one with bound modifiers, using both single words and phrases, as you like.
What do you notice?
One of the things you may have noticed in fooling around with bound modifiers is that they don’t require you to use internal sentence punctuation. Why is this so?
We don’t use internal punctuation (unless there’s a list involved) because our brains can recognize the boundary between one slot and another without punctuation. As we’ve seen, our brains are used to taking in sentence material, not one word at a time, but in groups of words that “go together.” Our brains recognize that the boundaries of slots mark the main segments of a sentence. So even if, in reading aloud, we might pause between the subject or the verb, or between the verb and the direct object, we don’t need to put punctuation at those boundaries unless we are adding other words or phrases between the boundaries—a technique we’ll get to in just a moment. We can trust that our readers will know that one slot has ended and another one has begun; that’s because, like us, they are totally familiar with the basic sentence patterns of English.
Something else you may have noticed in playing with bound modifiers is that some adverbial modifiers can, in fact, be moved to a different place in the sentence without changing its meaning. In fact, adverbials so frequently appear at the end of a sentence, or at the beginning—that is, not inside the verb slot—that some writers on syntax suggest there is a fifth syntactic slot, which they call the optional adverbial slot. If you prefer to consider adverbials in this way, go right ahead.
Here’s an example:
I ate lunch at noon.
At noon I ate lunch.
Flexible adverbials are an important tool for creating sentence drama, a subject we’ll explore later in this chapter.
To elaborate sentences with bound modifiers comes naturally to us, and this technique can often give powerful results, especially when we choose our added modifiers with care.
Jacob Saint was sitting at his ultra-modern desk in his ultra-modern chair. A cubistic lamp lit up the tight rolls of fat at the back of his neck. … Wreaths of cigar smoke rose above his pink head.
—Ngaio Marsh, Enter a Murderer
All that the unsuspecting Bilbo saw that morning was an old man with a staff. He had a tall pointed blue hat, a long grey cloak, a silver scarf … and immense black boots.
—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
The smell of mothballs came from a pyramid of hatboxes piled up beside the washstand.
—Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill
Can you name these modifiers as single words or phrases? One of the things you will notice is that phrases often “nest” inside other phrases. For instance, in the first example, of fat at the back of his neck is an adjectival phrase modifying rolls, while at the back of his neck is an adjectival phrase modifying fat and of his neck is an adjectival phrase modifying back. If this seems confusing to you, try extricating one of the phrases and applying it to one of the other nouns and you’ll see that the sentence no longer makes sense. A cubistic lamp lit up the tight rolls of his neck? No, our minds can’t make sense of that.
Imitate the use of bound modifiers in the above sentences (or sentences from your favorite writer). Remember that, for the time being, we are considering only single words and phrases as modifiers. What do you notice in doing this?
Bound modifiers are useful tools; and, like any tool, they can be relied upon too much. These days it’s common for writers (especially of academic or bureaucratic prose) to “load their slots” (especially the subject slot and the complement/direct object slot) with modifiers. Here’s an example:
An element of a shared symbolic system which serves as a criterion or standard for selection among the alternatives of orientation which are intrinsically open in a situation may be called a value …1… may be called a value… Talcott Parsons, quote by Richard A. Lanham, Style: An Anti-Textbook, p. 106.
If we try to strip this sentence down to a basic kernel (difficult to do!), we get An element may be called a value. Aside from the abstract and general language being used here, the main problem with the original sentence is the way words and phrases are “stuffed” into the subject slot: Just look at how long it takes this sentence to get to its verb!
If you add bound modifiers to a noun phrase or a verb phrase, you make that slot longer. Because there is no punctuation (except between items in a list, as in the Tolkien example above), there are no places in the slot where the reader can take a mental breath. The longer a slot is, the longer a reader has to wait to get to the next slot; therefore the longer she has to wait to put the whole sentence together: The boy in the blue hat who lives next door in the white house with the green shutters and the red roof is very nice.
Skilled writers never write like this. Instead, they use another technique for modification: free modifiers.
While elaborating your kernels with bound modifiers is a useful technique, being able to use another kind of modifier—called free modifiers—is even more useful. That’s because free modifiers enable us to add information to a sentence, not by “stuffing the slots,” but by keeping the kernel (also known as the base clause) relatively intact and elaborating it. Free modifiers can do this because they are almost always set off from the slots of the sentence by punctuation. You can remove free modifiers (also called nonrestrictive modifiers) from a sentence and be left with a structurally sound and meaningful kernel. Free modifiers can modify a single word or a phrase acting as a single content part of speech; less frequently, they modify an entire kernel.
The key to working with free modifiers is to keep in mind the basic structure of kernels: noun or noun phrase + verb or verb phrase. (When free modifiers are added to a kernel, usually the subject of the sentence is a phrase, and the predicate is a phrase.) Free modifiers do not interrupt these phrases; they add to them.
There are a number of verbal structures that can be used as free modifiers. Here we will concentrate only on phrases, especially prepositional phrases and participial phrases. (Single words can also be used as free modifiers, but more rarely than phrases and other structures.) Later on, we’ll look at other structures as free modifiers.
In the basic kernel pattern—noun phrase (subject) + verb phrase (predicate)—there are three places where we can place free modifiers:
When we elaborate a kernel sentence with free modifiers, we are adding these modifying words or phrases outside of syntactic slots. So, unlike bound modifiers, which are stuck inside slots, free modifiers can often be moved around to different places in a sentence. Free modifiers thus give writers the freedom to construct a sentence in a number of different ways, depending on the effects they want to create. Free modifiers, then, are one of a writer’s most useful tools.
Suppose you have this kernel sentence: The cows stand in the field. Suppose you want to add more information, like the fact that the cows are chewing their cud. You could rewrite the sentence adding that new information in a participial phrase: The cows stand in the field, chewing their cud. You might also rewrite the sentence placing the participial phrase before the subject: Chewing their cud, the cows stand in the field. It's even possible to put the participial phrase in between the subject and the verb: The cows, chewing their cud, stand in the field.
Some writers on grammar call a sentence that opens with one or more free modifiers a “left-branching sentence,” one that ends with free modifiers a “right-branching sentence,” and one with the free modifiers between subject and verb a “mid-branching sentence.” I prefer to think of free modification in terms of time: What do you want the reader to take in first? What do you want him to take in second? Third?
Free modifiers, like other sentence elements, can only be arranged in ways that make sense, so it isn't always possible to place any particular free modifier in any one of the three positions (before the subject, after the verb, between subject and verb). Nonetheless, free modification opens up a world of possibilities for sentence construction.
Write some kernels, noting the subject and predicate for each one. Now try adding some adjective or adverb phrases to your kernels, as free modifiers. Experiment with different kinds of phrases. Try putting your free modifiers into different places in your sentences. Do the sentences still make sense? How do they sound? Which arrangement do you prefer? Why?
Skilled writers make frequent use of free modifiers. Here are some examples:
Lazy and indifferent, shaking space easily from his wings, knowing his way, the heron passes over the church beneath the sky.
—Virginia Woolf, “Monday or Tuesday”
“You surprise me,” said Frank, yawning drearily, wanting a drink more than anything in the world.
—Elizabeth Bowen, “The Needlecase”
[The snow] had come from the north, in the mist, driven by the night wind, smelling of the sea.
—John le Carré, The Looking Glass War
With a rattle of chains, a tremble of engines, a blast of siren, the liner swept round in a half-circle to point into the Straits once more.
—Helen MacInnes, Decision at Delphi
Select one or more of the examples above (or some sentences from a writer of your choice). Read each sentence aloud, listening first for the kernel of the sentence. Read it again, listening now for the free modifiers. Notice, first, the kind of free modifier being used (single word or phrase; compound phrase, prepositional phrase, participial phrase). Then notice where in the sentence the free modifiers are added.
Now see if you can rewrite the sentence, putting its free modifier(s) in a different place. Does the sentence still make sense? (If not, then you can’t write the sentence that way.) How does it sound to you now? Which version do you prefer?
Now take one or more of these sentences and imitate its structure: That is, imitate the kind of free modifier being used and the place in the sentence where the writer has added it.
Understanding the technique of elaborating basic sentences in between syntactic slots will dramatically expand your repertoire of ways to construct sentences. I encourage you to spend as much time as you can investigating and practicing this technique. The more you study and practice, the easier it will be for your word mind to make choices when you write and revise.
Write a kernel sentence.
Write it again and add one or more free modifiers at the beginning.
Write it again and add one or more free modifiers at the end.
Write it again and add one or more free modifiers in the middle.
What do you notice?
In order to make clear that a phrase is serving as a free modifier, it must be set off by punctuation: typically commas or dashes; sometimes parentheses or ellipses.
Those flexible adverbial phrases discussed above can also be considered free modifiers because they can be moved around in a sentence. But, unlike other free modifiers, which must be set off by punctuation, these adverbials sometimes don’t have to be. For example, in the sentence At last the day arrived, we could add a comma after the word “last,” but we don’t have to, because, even without the comma, readers will still know how to phrase the sentence.
Free modifiers enable us to add more information and details to our sentences in a way that makes it easy for our readers to process them. Remember that the reader is always moving forward through a sentence. You do not want her to have to go back and reread (unless she’s thinking What a great sentence that was! I just have to read it again!). Free modifiers let us write longer sentences without confusing our readers.
So when we are deciding where in a sentence to place our free modifiers, the most important thing we need to consider is this: Does our sentence make sense?
Because free modifiers are so mobile, writers sometimes fail to keep this principle in mind.
Here are some sentences using free modifiers. Read them and note your reaction:
At the new Chinese restaurant, you can try a delicious pork dish. Thinly sliced and topped with a special sauce, food lovers won’t be disappointed.
After eating a four-course dinner, a concert was given.
Did these sentences make you laugh? Why?
The answer is that in each sentence a modifying phrase has been added in the wrong place, creating the impression that it modifies a word that common sense tells us it can’t possibly modify. Food lovers can’t be “thinly sliced,” nor can a concert eat a “four-course dinner.”
When a modifier is placed in the wrong spot in a sentence, grammarians call it a “misplaced modifier” or a “dangling modifier.” To avoid such grammatical errors, make sure to read your sentences out loud, slowly, and notice whether you have inserted your free modifiers in a place that creates nonsense. Remember that modifiers, to make sense, need to be placed so that their connection with the noun or verb they modify is absolutely clear.
Our options for placing any given free modifier in a particular kernel are always limited by common sense: There’s no point in trying to put a modifier someplace in a sentence where it distorts the meaning. But within the limits imposed by meaning, free modifiers provide us with options for moving our sentences forward and creating drama through sentence structure.
For instance, take this kernel:
The dog ran away.
Now, suppose we wanted to add an adverbial phrase: one cold night.
We could place that phrase before the subject: One cold night the dog ran away.
Or we could place it at the end of the sentence: The dog ran away one cold night.
We might even be able to put it in between the subject and the predicate: The dog, one cold night, ran away.
All these sentences make sense. But which one creates the most drama? Which one do you think will best keep a reader’s attention?
Naturally our choice depends on our focus, and on the sentences that precede and follow our sample sentence. But let’s assume that we’re writing about the dog. To my ear, then, the version of our sample sentence that has the most drama is the one that uses the free modifier to set the scene:
One cold night the dog ran away.
Try reading the three versions of the sentence out loud. Which one sounds most dramatic to you?
In this example we’re dealing with that flexible adverbial construction we looked at earlier. (Grammarians don’t consider this structure a free modifier, but in its mobility, it acts like one.)
There are other ways, too, that we can create drama in our sentences using free modifiers. Suppose we have this sentence: They struggled along the rocky, winding, treacherous path. If we want to, we can take these adjectives (bound modifiers) and combine them into an adjective phrase, and then rewrite the sentence, using the adjective phrase as a free modifier: They struggled along the path, rocky and winding and treacherous. Read these sentences out loud. Which one has more drama, to your ear?
Participial phrases as free modifiers can also give us a tool for creating drama. Consider this sentence: Holding out his hand, smiling broadly, the stranger approached her. Now consider this version: The stranger approached her, holding out his hand, smiling broadly. These sentences are both grammatically correct, but they present the same information in different orders. Read the two versions aloud, listening to the order of the information. Which one sounds better to you? Which one is more dramatic?
Now, creating drama in our sentences may not always be our goal. But, if it is, free modifiers are one of our best tools. Through free modifiers we can decide when to give readers information; we can build suspense and anticipation.
Write some kernels and elaborate each one with free modifiers, aiming to create drama in the sentence.
Free modifiers also help us create “flow,” or cohesion, in our writing. In other words, they help us move our readers’ minds forward from one sentence to the next.
Take, for instance, these three versions of the same sentence:
With the grace of a ballerina, the cat leaped onto the table.
The cat, with the grace of a ballerina, leaped onto the table.
The cat leaped onto the table with the grace of a ballerina.
Listen to these possibilities. Use your writer’s ear. Which one do you prefer?
Listen for sense. Listen for drama. And now, listen for movement—for how each sentence might move the reader’s mind forward to another sentence. What might that sentence say?
Remember the principle mentioned earlier that sentences move from known information to unknown information. According to that principle, the “new” information in a sentence comes at the end, which makes the end of a sentence a place of emphasis. Following this principle, it seems to me that the first two sentences, ending up with “the table” direct the reader’s mind there. I would expect the following sentence to say something more about the table, or about what the cat found, or did, there. The third sentence, though, ends with “ballerina,” and so I would expect the following sentence to say more about the cat’s ballerina-like qualities or behavior.
I should caution you that what we are discussing here is very much outside the realm of writing “rules.” All three ways of writing the sentence are “correct.” Which one is “right,” though, depends on the particular purpose of the individual writer.
Free modifiers give you a tool to make your own choices, choices that will contribute to your own style. I urge you to experiment, and to study how writers you like use free modifiers to move the reader’s mind from one sentence to the next.
Write a kernel and elaborate it with one or more free modifiers. Rewrite the sentence, putting the free modifiers in different places (within the limits of sense). Now take a few of these sentences and write a sentence or two after each of them. Does your writing go in a different direction, depending on where you put the free modifiers in your original sentence?
There are many tools to create sentence rhythm, and free modifiers are one of them. The length of a free modifying phrase, and where it’s inserted into a sentence kernel, both contribute to the rhythm of a sentence; so does how many modifying phrases the sentence contains. To borrow a term from music composition, free modifiers enable us to “phrase” our sentences. They let our writing breathe. (We’ll spend more time on this later.)
Write some kernels and elaborate them with free modifiers, using your ear to listen to the rhythms you are creating. What do you notice?
Now copy some sentences using free modifiers from one of your favorite writers. Read the sentences out loud, paying attention to the rhythm that is created by the number of free modifiers, their length, and where they are placed in the sentences. Write your own sentences imitating this rhythm.
Write some sentences using free modifiers, without constructing kernels first. (Keep the kernel pattern in mind, though). Experiment with putting the modifiers in different places in the sentences. Try using more than one free modifier in a sentence. Play, and see what happens!
Take a passage from your own work and rewrite it using free modifiers.
Practice making sentences that contain both bound and free modifiers. Play with using both bound and free modifiers as you write and rewrite a piece of your own.
The use of free modifiers is one of the marks of a skilled writer. One writer on style says, “[The] preservation of the kernel, or a succinct base clause of some kind, amid elaborate free modification, is one of the most important lessons any writer can master.” She adds, “Free modification is absolutely essential.”2… is absolutely essential. Virginia Tufte, Grammar as Style, pp. 39-40. When you can use free modifiers as well as bound modifiers, you avoid the pitfall of “loading the slots,” and all kinds of stylistic choices become available to you. You have more than one way of saying what you want to say; you have a powerful tool for creating drama and rhythm with your sentences. And, in making these choices, you create your own individual style.
Later on, we’ll examine some other sentence elements that can be used as free modifiers. Now, though, we’ll take a look at two especially useful ones: the appositive and the nominative absolute.
An appositive is a different kind of free modifier from the ones we’ve been playing with so far. Unlike the adjective and adverb phrases we've explored, this kind of free modifier is usually a noun phrase. (Skilled writers also use adjective or even verb phrases as appositives, but we’ll stick with noun phrases to begin with.)
So far we’ve encountered noun phrases in five roles in sentences: as the subject (My brother’s name is Joe.); as the complement of be or a linking verb (Joe was the happy kid in the family.); as the direct object of a transitive verb (The cat ate the leftover pizza.); as the indirect object of a transitive verb (Dick gave the black cat the leftover pizza.); as the object of a preposition or a verbal (We went to our grandfather’s farm, where we practiced milking a cow.). To act as an appositive gives noun phrases one more role to play.
When a noun phrase takes on the role of an appositive, it usually arrives very soon after another noun phrase. The first noun phrase is known as the antecedent of the appositive. Most of the time, the appositive serves to rename the antecedent, as in this example:
Cindy Alexander, my best friend, won the scholarship.
Here the noun phrase my best friend follows the noun phrase Cindy Alexander and renames it. Note that the appositive is set off by commas—and that it can be removed from the sentence and the sentence will still make sense.
Appositives give us an opportunity to insert more information about nouns into our sentences without having to “load slots.” It also gives us another option for where to place information. Apposition is a kind of juxtaposition, a placing of one thing next to, or near, something else. Skilled writers spend time considering where in a sentence information is best placed; apposition provides another tool for making meaning clear and for creating effects.
Appositives need to be set off from the rest of the sentence with punctuation—usually commas or dashes, but sometimes by parentheses or a colon. Sometimes writers make use of sentence fragments as appositives. (See the Christie in "Other Kinds of Appositives.")
What can we do with apposition?
We can use apposition as a form of repetition, to emphasize or call attention to something:
Steve made a bad joke, a really terrible joke.
In addition to creating emphasis, apposition used in this way can act as a springboard for the writer to add more details:
Steve made a bad joke, a really terrible joke, a joke so offensive that Cindy decided to break up with him right then.
We can also use the appositive as a kind of synonym for the antecedent. This is particularly helpful when the subject of the sentence is a pronoun. For instance:
He walked into the room, a man full of his own importance.
Sometimes we can use an appositive at the beginning of a sentence, to set it up:
The last kid to make the team, Tommy never played a single game.
Appositives can sometimes be placed in the middle of a sentence, too. For instance:
The dog Julie found—a cocker spaniel with sad eyes—is devoted to her.
As with other free modifiers, we can use appositives to create drama, cohesion, and rhythm in our sentences.
Write some kernels. Now add appositive noun phrases to each of them. Experiment with the placement of these appositives. What do you notice?
1. Appositive as synonym
When she left England the lawyer, an old man and an old friend, had patted her hand.
—W. Somerset Maugham, Up at the Villa
Everywhere he saw signs of il boom—the surge in wealth and literacy that was transforming Italy.
—Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins
Beyond the open window she could see the pale, cloudless sky, herald of a perfect day.
—Rosamunde Pilcher, “Spanish Ladies”
2. Appositive as a springboard for development
Once upon a time there was a bat—a little light brown bat, the color of coffee with cream in it.
— Randall Jarrell, The Bat Poet
This was the generation whose girls dramatized themselves as flappers, the generation that corrupted its elders and eventually overreached itself less through lack of morals than through lack of taste.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up
Use the examples above (or find some of your own from professional writers) to get ideas about how to use appositives. Imitate the way in which your chosen writer has used an appositive.
Sometimes writers use structures other than noun phrases as appositives. For instance, a writer may use as appositives adjective or adverb phrases. (Appositive adjectivals are placed after the noun they modify.)
Mrs. Bantry’s voice, breathless and agitated, came over the wire.
—Agatha Christie, The Body in the Library
She had a round and freckled face, dark brown eyes, and reddish hair, abundant and thick and windblown.
—Rosamunde Pilcher, “Miss Cameron at Christmas”
They stood by the door, the four of them, waving and waving until the pedlar, with his pack, his cudgel and his mastiff, had walked out of Swaffham; out of sight.
—Kevin Crossley-Holland, “The Pedlar of Swaffham”
Sometimes writers even use verbs as appositives:
He’d had enough, could stick it no longer.
—J.L. Carr, A Month in the Country
Without it she would be lost, would probably burst into tears and be unable to stop crying for the rest of the day.
—Rosamunde Pilcher, “Spanish Ladies”
Experiment with different kinds of appositives. Look at writers you like to see how they use appositives, and imitate what they do. Try putting appositives before the subject, in between the subject and predicate, after the predicate. What do you notice? One of the things you may notice is that appositives let you open up a sentence and move it forward, especially when placed after the predicate.
Once you’ve become comfortable using appositives, you may want to try out another effective technique, the nominative absolute.
A nominative absolute (also known as an absolute) is a noun phrase used as a sentence modifier. One of the most useful of the modifying structures, it is almost a complete sentence, so it lets you add a lot of information or detail to a kernel. A nominative absolute must begin with a noun, which cannot be the same as the subject of the sentence to which it’s added. Here are five ways to construct nominative absolute phrases:
Like other free modifiers, absolute phrases can often be moved to another place in the sentence; like other free modifiers, they can help you create drama, suspense, and rhythm.
Following the formulas given above, try constructing short sentences that contain absolute phrases. If you find this difficult, concentrate on one formula at a time, until you’ve mastered it. Experiment with moving an absolute phrase to different places in your sentence. What happens?
I had come out of the dark shop doorway into the dazzle of the Damascus sun, my arms full of silks.
—Mary Stewart, The Gabriel Hounds
She waited, the lines in her face deepened by her annoyance, and at last she swung the door fully open to let Fenner step inside.
—Helen MacInnes, The Venetian Affair
Find examples of nominative absolutes in the work of your favorite writer, or use the ones above, and imitate these sentences.
Make a list of all the kinds of modifiers you’ve learned about in this chapter. Now write some sentences using more than one kind. Experiment with using modifying words and phrases to create drama, suspense, and rhythm. Find sentences you like from the works of your favorite writers and imitate their structure. (See sidebar.)
I have mentioned that we can use structures other than phrases as modifiers. Before we explore how to do that, we will temporarily leave modifiers and the techniques of elaborating a single kernel and turn, in the next chapter, to techniques of combining kernels.
Before you turn to the next chapter, take some time to think about what you have learned in this one. What do you want to practice now? Are there any techniques you need to review before moving on? Remember that you are on your own learning journey, and you may want to spend more time with the material in this chapter before moving ahead.
You can, if you like, imitate a sentence by a professional writer entirely by ear: Read it aloud several times and then imitate the rhythm of the sentence structure. But you’ll learn a lot more if you first consciously take the model sentence apart and name its constituent structures, like this:
Model sentence: Mrs. Bantry’s voice, breathless and agitated, came over the wire.
1. Identify the kernel: Mrs. Bantry’s voice came over the wire.
2. Identify the parts of the kernel: S = Mrs. Bantry’s voice, P = came over the wire (S identifies the subject of the sentence; P identifies the predicate. Usually the predicate can be broken down further, as here: P = V [verb=came] + ADV [adverbial phrase = over the wire])
If you are at the stage in your practicing where you want to practice only kernels, then forget about the rest of your model sentence and imitate the kernel pattern it exemplifies: S + V + adverbial. In this case, you can, if you wish, enhance your practice by looking more closely at the components of the kernel sentence. You’ll see that here the subject of the model sentence is a noun phrase consisting of a possessive proper noun and another noun, and that the adverbial is a prepositional phrase. You might then write the pattern you want to practice this way:
Noun phrase (possessive proper noun + noun) + verb phrase (verb + prepositional phrase as adverb)
Now you have a more specific pattern to practice.
3. Identify the bound modifier(s): in this case, Mrs. Bantry’s.
4. Identify the free modifier(s): here, breathless and agitated—and name the construction and the role the modifier is playing (in this case, a compound adjective phrase serving as an appositive and modifying voice). Notice whether the free modifier is located before the subject, between the subject and predicate, or after the predicate.
5. Write the pattern you want to practice: For example, based on this model, you could extract this pattern:
Subject + two appositive adjectives in a compound phrase + predicate
6. Remember that you have choices about how specific you want your imitation to be: You should make your choice based on what you need to focus on in your practicing right now. So, if you are just starting to work with appositives, you might want to use the pattern in #5. Your sentence will then imitate the overall structure of your model but perhaps not the details. For instance, following the pattern in #5, you might write something like this: The boys, laughing and shouting, chased the dog. If you wanted your sentence to be a more exact copy of the model, then you would need to make the pattern you extract from your model more detailed, like this:
Subject (noun phrase = possessive noun as adjective + noun) + appositive adjectives in compound phrase + predicate (verb + adverbial prepositional phrase)
But most of the time, you can learn the skills you need by focusing on the larger elements of sentence structure (as in #5).
7. Don’t get ahead of yourself: Make sure that you have a solid grasp of the simpler structures before moving on to more complex ones.