A trickier modifier to master, but even more flexible, is the absolute – from the Latin absolūtus, meaning ‘free and unconstrained’. The absolute combines a noun phrase with a participial phrase and stands syntactically apart from the rest of the sentence, linked only by that thinnest of threads, a comma. I gaze at the dead leaves, their yellow-brown mulch littering the gutters. Absolutes are useful for doing away with weak linking verbs and conjunctions. My work for the day was done and I raided the fridge. My work for the day done, I raided the fridge.
