It is a phrase that relies on the subject and verb of the main clause, which means it lacks its subject and verb, unlike a clause. As the name suggests, it introduces the entire text to the reader; simply an introductory phrase sets a backdrop for the main text and answers, detail concerning who, what, when, where, why, and how, well more or less a replica of introductory clause.
Introductory words and phrases are usually offset by a comma and show that two ideas are connected yet not dependent. There are many types of introductory phrases:
1. Prepositional Phrases
It begins with a preposition and includes its object. It can act as a noun, adjective, or adverb.
Example: After party, they went to sleep.
Here “after party” is an adverb answering ‘when.’
Read more on – Examples of Prepositional Phrases for Kids
2. Appositive Phrases
It is a noun phrase that describes another noun Appositive phrases usually come after the nouns they describe, but they may come before it, as they do when they are introductory phrases.
Example: A great scientist, Thomas Alva Edison, invented the electric bulb. “A great scientist” is an appositive phrase describing Thomas Alva Edison.
3. Participle Phrases
As we know, participles are verbs ending in “-ing” or “-ed” that act as adjectives. They usually modify the subject of the sentence.
Example: Examining the wound carefully, the doctor decided that the best course of action was using staples instead of stitches.” Adjective clause describing doctor.
Note – Participle phrases are different from gerund phrases in that participles act as adjectives and gerunds act as nouns. Gerunds are not commonly used as introductory phrases, but participles are.
Read more on – Past and Present Participle Phrases
4. Infinitive Phrases
The word “to” followed by the base form of a verb is called an infinitive, and it is used to talk about the verb in the abstract, not connected with a subject. Introductory infinitive phrase act as an adverb.
For example: to keep the dog, you must prove you can take care of it.
Note– use introductory infinitive phrases to describe the purpose of the main verb in your sentence.
5. Absolute Phrases
An absolute phrase includes a subject and information about it but not a verb. It has all the pieces of an independent clause except the verb “to be.”
Example: “With the trees already growing back, the field was returning to nature.”
Note – Use them as introductory phrases to give More information about the circumstances in the main clause.
Read more on – Examples of Absolute Phrases
Examples of Introductory Phrases in Famous Fictions
Below are some introductory phrases from famous fictions as well as non-fiction to give you an idea of how things really should be:
• “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.”
—Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
• “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenberg, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”
—Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
• “A screaming comes across the sky.”
—Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
• “In the town, there were two mutes, and they were always together.”
—Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
• “You are full of nightmares,’ Harriet tells me.”
—James Baldwin, “This Morning, This Evening, So Soon”
• “He speaks in your voice, American, and there’s a shine in his eyes that’s halfway hopeful.”
—Don DeLillo, Underworld
• “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its way.”
—Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
• “It was raining in Richmond on Friday, June 6.”
—Patricia Cornwell, Postmortem
• “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can’t be sure.”
—The Stranger, Albert Camus
• “It was late in the spring when I noticed that a girl was following me, nearly the end of May, a month that means perhaps or might be.”
—Dietland, Sarai Dawkin
• “We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones.”
—Unweaving The Rainbow, Richard Dawkins
• “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du Contrat Social
• “The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful.”
—Language, Truth and Logic, Alfred Ayer
• “A frightful hobgoblin stalks throughout Europe.”
—The communist manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
• “The great English novelists are Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad.”
—The Great Tradition, FR Leavis
• “We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.”
—Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S Thompson.
Above all, by now, you might already have absorbed the backdrop of text which would succeed these introductory phrases. Since these were fished out from some famous novels doesn’t mean introductory phrases are only bound to novels, introductory phrases are part of every piece of writing. Before starting one, you should always know what you are writing, be it an essay or a trilogy.
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