Question

1. The pitcher, cradling the baseball in his mitt, sized up the young batter at the plate. Which of the following statements about the sentence is true? a. The sentence needs commas because the participial phrase is essential. b, The sentence needs commas because the participial phrase is nonessential. c. The commas should be removed because the participial phrase is essential. d. The commas should be removed because the participial phrase is nonessential

Answer 1

The answer to your question would be that the statement about the sentence that is true is the following one: The sentence needs commas because the partipial phrase is nonessential. That is, the correct option would be B.

Participial phrases can either be essential or nonessential depending on the type of information they add to the sentence. A participial phrase is essential when the information it provides is essential to the meaning of the sentence and therefore no commas are used. If the essential participial phrase was removed, the meaning of the sentence would be altered. On the other hand, participial phrases are nonessential when they provide nonessential information to the sentence. They are set off with commas and can be removed from the sentence without altering its meaning.

Answer 2

The statement about the sentence that is true is B. the sentence needs commas because the participial phrase is nonsessential. Nonessential phrases, unlike essential ones, are not that important in a sentence, and can thus be easily removed without changing the meaning of the sentence drastically. They are always set off from the rest of the sentence by commas, whereas essential phrases don't have commas around them. Here, the nonessential phrase is cradling the baseball in his mitt.