AS we have already seen in the first three parts of this series, absolute phrases are in many ways an intriguing part of speech of the English language. They can modify an entire sentence without using a finite noun or a finite verb, and without any conjunction to connect them to the main sentence: 'His dream realized, the man gave himself a well-deserved rest.' 'Their plan in shambles, the desperate politicians beat a hasty retreat.' Absolute phrases efficiently provide optional information that puts the idea in the main clause in context — often even overshadowing that idea.

Fairly common in expository and literary prose, absolute phrases take four forms: (1) as a noun plus a modifier, in a construction that sometimes even drops the noun altogether; (2) as a noun plus a participle; (3) as a noun plus an adjective; and (4) as a sentence tailender. Let's take a close look at how they work.