Adverbial Phrase
An adverbial phrase is a Phrase built around an Adverb. In other words, it’s a phrase with multiple words that operates as an adverb, modifying a verb, adjective, or another adverb.
What is an Adverbial Phrase?
An adverbial phrase is a group of words that have an identical impact as an adverb. Adverbial terms can modify a verb, adjective, adverb, clause, or sentence.
Adverbial phrases make a sentence more interesting and exciting. They tell us how (manner), when (time), where (place), why (reason), and how long (this is another type of adverbial phrase of time). This extra information gives the reader more detail, so they can gain more insight and context about what’s happening in a text.
What are some examples of adverbial phrases?
An adverbial phrase must be a group of two or more words, one of which must be an adverb. Some examples of adverbial terms we might encounter often are:
- in a while
- after school
- it is every day
- very quickly
- in the classroom
- because they’re happy
- it went badly
This helpful infographic shows us how adverbial phrases can be used in sentences.
The adverbial phrase is highlighted in orange in the examples above. If they were removed from each sentence, the sentences would be straightforward and would not give us as much detail.
Without the adverbial phrase, we would not know the reason for not doing the bungee jump. So, if you’ve been wondering, ‘What is an adverbial phrase?’ you can now see that adverbial phrases help us to understand things by providing extra information.
How to use adverbial phrases in sentences
| In silence | The class read the book in silence. |
| Behind the shed | Clare found her football behind the shed. |
| In the morning | We’ll take the dog for a walk in the morning. |
| In a minute | In a minute, I think I’ll have a slice of cake. |
| After the rain | There was a rainbow after the rain. |
| Most days | Most days, I have to get up at 7 am. |
| In the classroom | Everyone was well-behaved in the classroom. |
| Before school | Charley needed to find his homework before school. |
| In the distance | I could see a car coming in the distance. |
| Very slowly | The plant was growing very slowly. |
What’s the difference between an adverbial phrase and an adverbial clause?
An adverbial phrase doesn’t have to contain a subject and a verb. However, it must include more than one word and function as an adverb, modifying a verb, an adjective, or another adverb.
On the other hand, Adverbial clauses have to contain a subject and a verb as well as an adverb. An example of this is:
‘He does his homework before he eats his dinner.’
In this sentence, ‘before he eats his dinner’ is an adverbial clause – it contains a subject (‘he’) and a verb (‘eats’) as well as telling us when (‘before’).
It’s worth noting that adverbial clauses are always dependent clauses, otherwise known as subordinate clauses. They can’t stand alone – in other words; they can’t make sense without the rest of the sentence. Adverbial clauses modify the main clause in a sentence (in this example, ‘He does his homework’). They give us more information about what’s happening in the main clause.
When is an adverbial phrase a fronted adverbial?
A fronted adverbial is an adverb, phrase, or adverbial clause used at the beginning of a sentence. Like common adverbial phrases, fronted adverbials give more detail and texture to a sentence, telling us when, where, how, or why something is done or has happened.
Some of the examples we’ve used above are fronted adverbials, such as:
- In a minute, I think I’ll have a slice of cake.
- Most days, I have to get up at 7 am.
The great thing about adverbial phrases and clauses is that we can often choose whether to use them at the beginning or the end of a sentence. For example, we can use our adverbial clause as a fronted adverbial:
- Before he eats his dinner, he does his homework.
This ability enables us to add variation to our writing, making it more interesting for the reader.
However, a fronted adverbial doesn’t have to be an adverbial phrase or clause. A single adverb can be a fronted adverbial all on its own. For example:
- Later, I’ll go to the cinema.
- Suddenly, the clouds disappeared.
How to punctuate adverbial phrases and clauses
The whole point of adverbial phrases and clauses is to make a sentence more sense. This won’t happen if you don’t use the correct punctuation. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to get it right!
The general rule is that if you’re using your adverbial phrase at the end of a sentence, it doesn’t need a comma. For example, there’s no need for a comma in the sentence ‘We’ll take the dog for a walk in the morning’.
However, if we use the adverbial phrase as a fronted adverbial, the sentence becomes, ‘In the morning, we’ll take the dog for a walk’. As we can see, this sentence has a comma because it needs one.
So, the general rule is that you need a comma after an adverbial phrase if you’re using it at the beginning of a sentence. Still, you don’t need a comma before an adverbial expression if you use it at the end of the sentence.
