Absolute (Phrase) Power!

In this post we're going to explore something you may use all the time in your writing—probably without even knowing it. I'm talking about the absolute phrase.

Basically, an absolute phrase is a noun followed by a modifier (an adjective or a phrase that acts like one). Probably the most common one used in everyday speech is, "all things being equal." "All things" is the noun, and "being equal" is the modifier. (It's a participial phrase, to be exact. You remember those, don't you?)

Of course, nobody ever says just, "All things being equal." It's not a complete sentence. You still need a subject and a predicate: "All things being equal, tomorrow's baseball game will likely not occur because of the giant asteroid about to hit the earth."

And you will notice that the sentence would function perfectly well without the absolute phrase. That's why it's set off with commas—to indicate that it's not essential to the sentence's meaning.

Because it's non-essential, it can fit almost anywhere in a sentence. Note that you could insert "all things being equal," wrapped in commas, at any of the asterisks below and the sentence would still sound perfectly natural.

Tomorrow's baseball game * will * likely * not * occur * because of the giant asteroid about to hit the earth.

You could even stick it at the end, preceded by a comma.

Are you starting to recognize the absolute phrases in your own writing now? Here's an example from a previous post (modified).

Agent Pi hesitated, finger above the abort button, while Penny Nickeldime screamed.

The absolute phrase's chief value to this passage is word economy. You could easily tie it into the sentence like so:

Agent Pi hesitated, and his finger was above the abort button while Penny Nickeldime screamed.

But the extra words required are largely dead weight. Most editors would prefer the former.

Now that you understand the concept, you may find the absolute phrase pretty cool. By itself, it would be a sentence fragment likely to get your manuscript rejected. In conjunction with a proper sentence, though, it makes you look like a literary scholar! Right?

Maybe.

Consider this:

Laughing maniacally, the proton detonator pulsing through his evil lair, Dr. Loony activated the uplink to the White House.

See how it seems that the proton detonator and not Dr. Loony is laughing? (Maybe the nonsensical sentence structure amuses the detonator.)

You could fix this with a simple reordering:

Laughing maniacally, Dr. Loony activated the uplink to the White House, the proton detonator pulsing through his evil lair.

But some may find this sentence awkward, the subject and predicate buried between two sentence-structure-variation-devices.

No matter how clever the absolute phrase might seem, the subject and predicate remain the most important parts of the sentence; you shouldn't obscure them. Therefore, it's generally best to avoid using both absolute and participial phrases in the same sentence.

I hope this helps you realize some of the writing talent you didn't know you had. Feel empowered now?

Good. Because next we're taking on the dreaded passive voice.