Here are the sentences that served as models for the exercises on page one: Revising Sentences With Absolute Phrases. Keep in mind that more than one correct response is possible.
- Their slender bodies sleek and black against the orange sky, the storks circled above us.
- On the tops of the hills, the grass stands at its tallest and greenest, its new seed plumes rising through a dead crop of last year's withered spears.
- Odysseus comes to shore, the skin torn from his hands, the sea water gushing from his mouth and nostrils.
- His first marriage having ended in divorce and his second in despair, Norton vowed never to marry again.
- The double giant Ferris wheel circles, the swaying seats more frightening than a jet plane flying through a monsoon.
- All afternoon the caravan passed by, shimmering in the winter light, its numberless facets gleaming and the hundreds of wagon wheels turning in the dust in slow and endless motion.
- Six boys came over the hill, running hard, their heads down, their forearms working, their breaths whistling.
- The buildings sit empty, jagged pieces of glass sticking out of the frames of the hundreds of broken windows.
- Proud of my freedom and bumhood, I stood in the doorway of the boxcar, rocking with the motion of the train, my ears full of the rushing wind and the clattering wheels.
- His hair wet from the showers, he walked in the icy air to Luke's Luncheonette, where he ate three hamburgers in a booth with three juniors.
