Participles
The second major type of verbal is the participle. A participle is a verbal that is used as an adjective and mostly ends in -ing or -ed. They modify nouns or pronouns. There are two types of participles, present and past. A present participle ends in -in and -ing while a past participle usually ends in -ed, -en, d, t, or n.
An example of a present participle is a word like crying or burning.
An example of a past participle is a word like asked, eaten, or seen.
A participial phrase is a group of words consisting of a participle and a modifier and or pronoun or noun phrase that function as the direct object, indirect object, or complement of the action or state expressed in the participle.
An example of a participial phrase functioning as an adjective is: Removing his coat, Jack rushed to the river.
The participial phrase should be placed as close to the noun it is modifying as possible and the noun must be clearly stated. Participial phrases do need some punctuation. 1. When the phrase begins a sentence, a comma should be placed after the phrase. 2. If it comes in the middle of the sentence, it should be set off with commas only if the information is not essential to the meaning of the sentence. 3. No commas are used if the phrase is essential to the meaning of the sentence. 4. Finally, if the phrase comes at the end of a sentence, a comma usually precedes the phrase if it modifies an earlier word in the sentence but not if the phrase directly follows the word it modifies.
Examples:
1. Arriving at the store, I found that it was closed.
2. Sid, watching an old movie, drifted in and out of sleep.
3. The guy wearing the chicken costume is my cousin.
4. The local residents often saw Ken wandering through the streets. ( The phrase modifies Ken, not residents.
Most of this information and some of the examples came from the Purdue University wesbite on grammar. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_verbals.html